Australia is preparing to announce [DONE] its intent to purchase several nuclear submarines, media reports suggest.

This development comes less than two years after the establishment of AUKUS, a trilateral military pact between the US, UK and Australia, which appears to be aimed at containing China.

Professor Joe Siracusa, US political expert and dean of global futures at Australia's Curtin University, shared his thoughts on the matter with Sputnik, providing his opinion on how this move may affect Australia and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and whether these vessels might pose a threat to China.

Sputnik: Washington and other allied capitals have been abuzz with talk of nuclear submarines since the surprise announcement of AUKUS' creation in September. The new agreement has been met with adulation from the US foreign policy establishment - but what's behind the big words? How likely is AUKUS to deliver nuclear submarines anytime soon?

 

Prof. Joe Siracusa: I think it's a bit of an illusion. I mean, the Australians are really happy to get on board this. They're committed to pay about $200 billion over a 30-year period. And I doubt they're going to receive more than one or two submarines.[NOT ALL AUSTRALIANS ARE HAPPY ABOUT THIS SUB-CRAP]

They're going to be these "Virginia" class submarines, which supposedly are going to be built in Australia, which require thousands of people in the industrial base.

They're going to have to train thousands of young men and women to serve on these submarines. I mean, it'll be years and years. But Australia thinks it's acquired sort of a magical weapon, the kind the British had with the Dreadnoughts before the First World War.

There's something magical about it. Well actually, there isn't. The Americans will be patrolling the western part of Australia until these ships can come online. They’ll probably initially be used, "Virginia" class submarines, and it's not going to be newish.

 

And the Americans have control over the nuclear propulsion. And then Australians say they're in charge of the sovereignty of the ship. So I've been pointing out today to different people that if you got multinational groups on board a boat and the captain makes a decision to start a war or to engage in combat, there's no discussion. I mean, these ships to me are a very bad choice by Australia. They think they've bought some security.

Maybe in the short term it gives them some peace of mind. But there's just no way that this acquisition, even if it ever comes true, is going to stop anybody from doing anything else. You know, generally, selling the Australians nuclear weapons, it's a bit of a con job.

 

The Australian government isn't going to tell their own people what they cost [WE NOW KNOW THE OUTRAGEOUS COSTS] when they're talking about percentage of GNP in the years that go forward. It's kind of like a Ponzi scheme. I'm going to sell you a great nuclear-powered submarine. I'm not going to tell you exactly what I'm going to deliver it and you're going to be paying for it over 30 years.

 

And all the people who've organized this aren't even going to be alive to see it done, you know. They'll either be out of office or they're going to be dead. And so, the Australians are buying a lot of hope here. To me, this suggests a great deal of ignorance, as though these ships would be enough to frighten China. The Chinese, the PLA Navy is not going to lose any sleep tonight over these discussions. Australians have given up something else for the Americans.

The Australians think they are leaders in the world of international nuclear nonproliferation. But by acquiring these nuclear-powered submarines, they've broken the spirit and letter of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And the United States knows this, the Chinese government has correctly objected to this at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

In exchange for breaking the record of international cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation, they're not even going to get a weapon for years and years. And by that time, maybe the leadership in Beijing will change. I mean, the world will have changed. It's extraordinary what they think they've bought into.

 

Sputnik: What are the implications of the AUKUS deal for nuclear non-proliferation?

 

Prof. Joe Siracusa: The Chinese have said quite clearly in interviews with Australians over the last couple of months that they now regard Australia as a nuclear target because Australia is no longer a nuclear weapons-free zone, that is, the Southwest Pacific.

So, one of the results is that the Chinese said they will now target Australia with nuclear weapons when the time comes... I mean, Australia has lost its reputation and the Chinese are very angry at Australia and China sees Australia as simply playing in with the Americans as part of this containment policy. So Australia is not going to move forward in the area of improving diplomacy with the Chinese.

This is going to put them on the back foot and, of course, the Australians are very dependent on the Chinese to buy their coal and their iron ore and send their international students. I think Australia is going to pay a very heavy economic price to the Chinese as a result of this.

 

Sputnik: Do you believe AUKUS can be a “silver bullet” when it comes to the Chinese maritime challenge?

 

Prof. Joe Siracusa: Australia would just be part of a group of American and British ships. Canberra, the capital of Australia, is 10,000 miles to Washington and nearly 11,000 miles to London. Beijing is about 5,000 miles. If Australia plies the high seas or goes on patrol in the South China Sea or in the Taiwan Strait, it's far, far away from protecting the lines of communication here or in the homeland.

Keep in mind that the parameters of Australia is 12,500 miles in its perimeter; and that's the distance between Sydney and London via Suez Canal. They don't have enough surface ships, they don't have enough anything to protect the country. This country is pretty vulnerable, as a matter of fact. So buying security here is a bit of an illusion.

 

What I don't like is this: they reckon that for years that Australians would be part of American personnel on these ships. So you're going to have these mixed nationalities on these ships and of course, Australians are not going to be telling American captains not to fire or not to start a war, or not to engage the enemy wherever the enemy is. [AS USUAL, THE ENEMY IS US]....

 

READ MORE:

https://sputniknews.com/20230313/australia-pukes-up-its-independence-by-purchasing-us-nuclear-submarines-says-scholar-1108352443.html

 

READ FROM TOP

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

 

By Allan Patience

 

There are few who think as clearly, who are as articulate, and who are prepared to speak out in the face of incredible stupidity in Australian politics as Paul Keating. And, as he made clear in his address to the press club this week, AUKUS is nothing if not an exercise in security policy stupidity.

 

Paul Keating is perhaps the most abrasive public figure of any stature in Australia today. In the space of a single appearance he can be pugnacious, whip-smart, arrogant, snarling, and then all of a sudden he can switch to being witty, charming, and inspirational.

As Treasurer in the Hawke government, he was the leading champion of neoliberal economics, an ideology he happily absorbed from America.

Yet Keating has been consistently correct about the need for Australia to become “engaged” with its Southeast and East Asian geopolitical neighbours. He has been very clear that we need to find our security in Asia, not from Asia. When he was in politics he implicitly (and sometimes very explicitly) warned about Australia’s dependent security relationship with the United States. He also warned about the role of Australia’s intelligence community in entangling Australia in the Americans’ determination to remain the dominant power in the Asia Pacific, whatever the cost to Australia. Like its American counterpart, the Australian intelligence community is largely ideologically driven and inadequately educated.

At his latest appearance at the National Press Club (NPC), his tough – even ruthless ­– side was very much to the fore as he excoriated the Albanese government – focusing especially on Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong and Richard Marles – for what he argues is the massive blunder they have signed up for in the AUKUS submarine deal with the US and the UK. He was also magically dismissive of some of the hack journalists and naïve neophytes in the media. Mostly their questions showed that they had not been listening to him, or that they were incapable of understanding the importance of his argument.

That AUKUS seems to have become a fait accompli is now a regrettable and potentially fatal fact. The hype surrounding it, from the day its self-proclaimed “father” (Morrison) announced it, to the carefully contrived photo ops of Albanese with Biden and Sunak in San Diego has been unrelenting. The role of the mainstream media, especially the Murdoch press, has been to uncritically and fulsomely celebrate the AUKUS proposal. More recently, the spreads by the so-called defence experts in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, warning that war with China is likely to occur within three years, turns out to have been a softening up exercise aimed at manipulating public opinion into supporting what Paul Keating thinks (with justification) is the AUKUS madness.

Keating’s argument is a straightforward one. He believes that Australia does not need to purchase the hyper-expensive nuclear-driven submarines. He argues plausibly that the existing Collins class submarines should be upgraded and augmented (up to 15 at sea at any one time) at far less cost to the Australian taxpayer and that they would be more effective than three AUKUS boats in defending Australia’s shores.

He also presented a strong case that China is not intent on invading Australia, nor is it wanting a war with the United States. Its massive military build-up is, he noted, is characteristic of a great power. In constructing, for example, the military bases in the South China Sea, its focus has been on defending itself from American and allied powers strategic manoeuvrings off the Chinese periphery in the Pacific. He correctly noted that if China were to conduct sea-based exercises off the coast of California, all hell would break loose in Washington and abject hysteria in Canberra.

Keating also pointed out the great beneficiaries of the AUKUS deal are the moribund ship-building firms in post-Thatcherite Britain and the US submarine makers (those egregious members of the US military-industrial complex). Australia, he pointed out, was the only member of the alliance to be providing cash – massively more, as it turns out than we were originally expected to believe – to the other two participants in the deal. They must be laughing all the way to their banks.

Paul Keating can be his own worst enemy when he is trying to make a case about Australian public policy – be it superannuation, climate change, or Australia’s defence and security policies. But there are few who think as clearly, who are as articulate, and who are prepared to speak out in the face of incredible stupidity in Australian politics. And, as he made clear, AUKUS is nothing if not an exercise in security policy stupidity.

No doubt the journalists he offended, or treated with the contempt they deserved at the Press Club will seek their revenge by attacking his analysis of AUKUS in their various outlets. In doing so, they will display yet again the depths to which Australia’s third rate media have plunged in recent years. They are incapable of taking seriously the very serious case he is making.

It is to be hoped that Labor Party branches around the country will listen carefully to what Paul Keating is saying about this issue of vital importance to the country’s security future. When asked whether he was separating himself from the ALP on the issue, he first pointed to the long tradition of Labor astuteness on security policy matters. But he also noted that this was an issue that requires one to put country before party, displaying his capacity for statesmanship.

If the entire Labor organisation, at local, regional state and federal levels, falls tamely into line with Albanese, Wong and Marles on this profoundly bad AUKUS arrangement then, as when Malcolm Fraser walked away from the Liberal Party because of the Howard government’s asylum seeker policies, so Paul Keating may have to walk away from the Labor Party. And so may many others.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/paul-keating-reveals-aukus-as-exercise-in-security-policy-stupidity/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

Why is the White House urgently changing US ambassadors to Central Asia?

 

    BY Vladimir Platov

 

In hopes of further spinning its geopolitical project of establishing a “belt of instability” around Russia, the Biden administration has recently started to place a special emphasis on working with the countries of Central Asia, seeking to turn these “five” into puppet states wholly dependent on the United States. For this purpose, since the end of last year, Washington has urgently been changing personnel in the American diplomatic corps, its controlled commercial enterprises, non-governmental organizations, and among media representatives. It is noteworthy that mostly controversial, fringe personalities with distinct military skills have been sent to work in the five Central Asian countries.

Speaking of the latest emergency reshuffle of some US ambassadors, what comes to mind is the recent replacement by the White House of US Ambassador John Mark Pommersheim, who had worked in Tajikistan for less than three years and was one of the “best experts” on Russia in 2019, an intellectual father of a large family and a Pushkinist. In his stead, on February 14, the “new energetic” Manuel P. Micaller, Jr. arrived in Dushanbe, not as a diplomat, but as a military/intelligence officer with experience in conducting offensive economic operations in the interests of the United States, particularly opposing and discouraging economic cooperation between Central Asian nations and Russia and China.

In December, the newly appointed US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Lesslie C. Viguerie, presented copies of his credentials to the Kyrgyz authorities. Washington’s “special interest” in the country became quite apparent after the Pentagon, at the initiative of the Kyrgyz authorities, lost control of the transit center at Manas airport in 2014 and over Afghanistan in 2021. After that, the White House adopted an unconcealed policy of actively separating Kyrgyzstan from Russia and preventing the country’s participation in regional associations such as the EAEU and the SCO, both of which Washington particularly hates. Representatives of various administrations and US ambassadors have repeatedly acknowledged this before.

The new US ambassador Lesslie C. Viguerie makes no secret of such a sentiment, who, relying on the Russophobic fifth column of US-funded media and NGOs already established in Kyrgyzstan, started organizing another “color revolution” in the country and inciting anti-Russian sentiment among the local populace. This was in particular confirmed by another information war unleashed on March 6 against Russia and Russian Ambassador to Kazakhstan, Nikolay Udovichenko, in Vecherniy Bishkek newspaper closely connected to the US Embassy through the US Agency for International Development (USAID). It is not for nothing that this newspaper has recently received American awards “for promotion of democratic values.” In fact, Lesslie C. Viguerie did not even try to hide his anti-Russian attitude, as he said in his first post-appointment interview to the local newspaper 24.kg that his main task was to stir up Russophobia in the country.

However, as residents of Kyrgyzstan note, it cannot be ruled out that such zealous anti-Russian activity by Viguerie could lead him to repeating the fate of his predecessor, American Ambassador Donald Lu, who was forced to leave Bishkek without a replacement in 2021. The activity of Mr. Lu, which was quite distant from diplomatic methods of work in the sovereign state and his “strange” ties with the American intelligence community, are well remembered in this republic. WikiLeaks made public nearly 200 dispatches which were disclosed by unknown hackers stating that while Lu was in different diplomatic posts he sent classified dispatches to such organizations as CIA, DIA, National Security Council and other similar agencies.

As for the new ambassador, Lesslie C. Viguerie, local news sources mention his connections with the American secret services specializing in drug trafficking and political affairs. Therefore, it is not surprising that Viguerie is especially active in Kyrgyzstan to protect Western-funded NGOs and media in the country, clearly in order to create conditions for a repeat of the Ukrainian Maidan, recent events in Georgia and the anti-Russian movement.

Not much different from the aforementioned new US ambassadors to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan is Jonathan Henick, who began a similar role in Uzbekistan in November. Previously at the State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA), he was responsible for conducting US public diplomacy in 13 countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. While working at the Global Engagement Center (GEC), he was actively involved in “coordinating US government efforts to counter Russia, China, and Iran.”

As one of his active areas of advocacy for US interests in Muslim Uzbekistan, Henick decided to advance the protection of the rights of LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex), religious minorities and women. As Henick stated, “I will be an LGBT advocate in the host country. We have to teach the local population about free relationships. The people of Uzbekistan must accept our ideas.” — A truly “progressive way” to implement the White House’s Russophobic policies.

The information-psychological war was also started by Henick’s predecessor, Daniel Rosenblum, who now heads the American diplomatic mission in Kazakhstan. Daniel Rosenblum makes no secret of his objectives in his “new residence,” declaring the necessity to not only eliminate the pro-Russian media which allegedly “forms a distorted perception of the world,” but also to find alternative ways of transportation of oil products from Kazakhstan bypassing Russia.  At the same time, Rosenblum demonstrated his determination to defend the interests of the US-funded Central Reference Laboratory in Almaty, which is associated with bioweapons. In recent period alone, in Kazakhstan, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) implemented 28 American biological programs with a total budget not less than 20 million dollars, and spent more than 100 million dollars for construction and equipping of the Central Reference Laboratory (CRL). Of particular interest to NATO countries for secret research here are Central Asia-specific diseases that are dangerous to humans, as well as methods of their transmission by animals or other routes. The US, British and German defense agencies need such information in case they are preparing a war with the CSTO or SCO countries, in order to start in advance developing biological weapons corresponding to regional peculiarities. And this data can only be obtained through field research, for which the CRL provides capabilities. In addition, the CRL can perform for the Pentagon the same functions as the Guantánamo Bay prison, as it is a place where one can do things that cannot be done on US territory because of legal restrictions. During the period when the infectious disease laboratory was located in Kazakhstan, it came under the de facto control of the US Army and Navy, despite the formal subordination to the Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan. Thus, in fact, the CRL with all of its related structures turned into an unregistered military base of the United States and NATO in Kazakhstan, and this is the best explanation of Rosenblum’s zeal in protecting the interests of the American CRL in this country.

In light of all this, it is noteworthy that President Biden appointed Elizabeth Rood as the United States’ ambassador to Turkmenistan in late 2022. Rood combined her training at the Noble Maidens’ Boarding School with close ties to the American military. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Randolph-Macon College for Women. In particular, she has served as a faculty advisor to the US Army War College and as head of the US Department of State’s Office of Export Control Cooperation in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation.

This bouquet of US diplomacy in Central Asia speaks volumes about the upcoming focus in the region. The only thing left to do is to monitor closely the reaction of the local population to these “doodles” of the White House, which can hardly promise a successful policy of “American-style democracy promotion.” Even despite Secretary Blinken’s recently demonstrated attempt to support the new appointees during his February 28 meeting in Astana with his Central Asian counterparts.

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook.”

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2023/03/16/why-is-the-white-house-urgently-changing-us-ambassadors-to-central-asia/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z82-mG_U-90

 

It's hard to know if the delivery of truth is funny or not.... The Buster Keaton/Harry Secombe character barely lifts an eyebrow while delivering a comment on a possible new law in the country of Charlie 3.... You be the judge....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

 

We are being seduced into war again by the US, this time over Taiwan

    

By John Menadue

 

The US must be told that we will not be involved in any way in a war with China over Taiwan.

After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan the signs of our entrapment again in US war planning are everywhere.

The 2014 Force Posture Agreement with the US cedes control of certain military operations from our territory to the US eg Marines in Darwin and US B52’s in Tindal.

The 2021 AUSMIN ministerial meeting endorsed :

• Enhanced air cooperation through the rotational deployment of U.S. aircraft of all types in Australia and appropriate aircraft training and exercises.
• Enhanced maritime cooperation by increasing logistics and sustainment capabilities of U.S. surface and subsurface vessels in Australia.
• Enhanced land cooperation by conducting more complex and more integrated exercises and greater combined engagement with Allies and Partners in the region.
• Establishment of a combined logistics, sustainment, and maintenance enterprise to support high end warfighting and combined military operations in the region.

The 2021 AUKUS agreement was a clear sign to our region that instead of building bridges to our region we have decided to be a spear carrier for the US and UK- the Anglosphere. AUKUS is not to defend Australia but to support US operations against China in the South China Sea.

Our Defence Strategic Review (DSR)released this week has been’ authored’ by the United States Studies Centre(USSC), an arm of the US government. It is a tainted review. Have we no national pride in letting this happen!

Our Washington centric media don’t seem to think that it is unusual or even outrageous for a foreign agency to author an Australian defence review!!

Our  seduction by the US is assisted by our Department of Defence with its close links to the Pentagon.  It secretly employs US Admirals to advise on submarines. And if that is not enough we are now  going to have a retired US Admiral heading the coming Naval  Review. What is wrong with our Navy that an Australian can’t do the job? Has integration gone so far that we don’t have a Navy of our own that is worth the name.

And don’t think for one moment in this humiliation that Albanese and Marles thought up this US Admiral. They would have been put up to it by our defence establishment in lock step with the Pentagon.

The ADF has become a unit of the US military machine.

There is more.

The Government has rejected the Australian War Powers Reform proposal that Parliament approve any commitment to war. This is essential because we have an awful history of rushing to war. In 1914, we decided to send troops to WWI before Britain declared war. Menzies committed Australia to war in Vietnam before we even received a request. Howard committed us to the illegal war in Iraq based on false intelligence. Now the Labor Party has committed us to AUKUS in less than 24 hours despite the enormous implications. Albanese says he is proud of how quickly he agreed with Morrison!

Changes to our Defence Act are also being considered which would allow the ADF inter alia to conduct operations below the threshold of war, known as ‘grey zone’ operations. These amendments could have far reaching consequences.

At our universities, Peace Studies are run down in favour of ‘Strategic Studies’ with their US loyalists regularly appearing on our media. Think Tanks like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute are fronts for US defence interests.

Entrapment of our minds in the anti China hysteria is the work in progress of our Main Stream Media. Our fourth estate has been captured and imbedded in the US propaganda machine. The US cultural and media domination is everywhere. Alternative views are shunned. The White Man’s Media is on full display.

The disgraceful ‘Red Alert’ is the tip of a giant iceberg. The anti China propaganda is an every day event in our media including the ABC and SBS .

In the past, the ALP said NO on Vietnam and Iraq even though it was difficult at the time. As Paul Keating put it at the National Press Club recently ‘Labor has invariably got the big international (decisions) right’. But today the ALP has gone AWOL. Concerns about entrapment by the US and loss of sovereignty are brushed aside. What many of us thought were Labor policies and values count for little.

Penny Wong suggests that Keating has not kept up to date and has not had the benefit of Intelligence briefings!! But the reverse is true. The Labor Government is reverting to our colonial past, our colonial cringe – Five Eyes, AUKUS and the Anglosphere.

Wong plays with words to avoid asking or knowing whether B52’s in Tindal will be nuclear armed against China. She tells us that US forces are ‘rotated’ though Darwin and Tindal and not ‘based’ there.

The US is persistently goading China into war over Taiwan. This is consistent with US behaviour over centuries. It is driven by its self righteous belief in its ‘exceptionalism’ and the pressure of its military/industrial/security complex for endless wars. It expects other major powers like China to behave as aggressively as it has. China has no Monroe Doctrine which Americans believe gives them the God given right to interfere in other country’s affairs.

Australia has a sorry history of fighting other empires wars, first with the British and now with the US. The great risk and problem for us is that imperial powers are almost always at war.

Since its founding in 1776, the US has been at war 93% of the time. Since the end of WWI, the US has launched 201 armed conflicts around the world. During the Cold War it tried to change governments 72 times. It assassinated foreign leaders and still assassinates with drones guided from Pine Gap. It has 800 bases around the world, many of them in Japan and ROK directed at China. With our cooperation, US fleets cruise and sight see up and down the Chinese coast. At the same time as criticising China, the US refuses to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The US would have national convulsions if Chinese vessels patrolled off the Californian coast or China established military bases in Mexico!

The US is the most aggressive and violent country in the world . It lurches from one war to another. That violence abroad is mirrored in its violent gun culture at home. There is a pervasive sickness and it is not just Trump!

When we tagged behind imperial powers in the past there was little military risk to Australia. But that is not so today, with the reckless US goading of China over Taiwan. If we were involved in support of the US against China over Taiwan the results could be catastrophic for us.

China is certainly growing in influence and confidence. That is not surprising after over a century of western and Japanese invasion and humiliation. But China is not a military threat to either the US or Australia. The military threat is trumped up by the US and its acolytes with their own agenda.

In brazen mendacity Marles highlights the rapid increase in China’s military spending. But he failed to tell us that the US spends more on defence than the next nine countries combined. The US spends 3.5% of its GDP on defence. China spends 1.6%.

The Stockholm International Peace Institute only a few days ago put military spending in perspective – The United States remains by far the world’s biggest military spender. US military spending reached $877 billion in 2022, which was 39 per cent of total global military spending and three times more than the amount spent by China, the world’s second largest spender.

Surrounded by numerous US bases and the US Fleet it is not surprising that China is increasing its defence spending.

But China is a challenge to US hegemony and the US empire around the globe. The US is unwilling to come to terms with China’s success and share power and responsibility. The US insists on its own rules and  domination across the globe. Empires are like that.

How do we break out of the US entrapment, the FPA, AUKUS, AUSMIN and a lot more? How can we cut through this maze of entrapment.

Peter Dutton has warned us that is ‘inconceivable that Australia would not join the US to defend Taiwan’.

There is one critical and urgent thing the Australian Government should do, and that is to make it clear to the US that we will not be involved in any way with a war between China and the US over Taiwan and that none of our facilities can be used for that purpose – Pine Gap, Darwin or Tindal.

For decades we have  maintained that Taiwan is part of China.

Paul Keating has said many times that ‘Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest’. Even Defence Minister Marles, ever so close to the US, told ABC Insiders last month that ‘Australia has absolutely not given the US any commitment as part of the AUKUS negotiations that it would join (the US) in a potential war over the status of Taiwan’.

But we need to tell the US explicitly and well in advance of any possible conflict over Taiwan that we will not support the US. In a crisis it will be too late to assert our sovereignty.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/we-are-being-seduced-and-trapped-into-war-again-by-the-us-this-time-over-taiwan/

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....