DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? with Antony LOEWENSTEIN
Channel: Cathy Vogan Films
Date: 2013-04-15

I think what the Australian public sees in Julian Assange and Wikileaks is information they believe they should be told, and they aren't being told, and we have to ask ourselves a very important question: " Why haven't Fairfax, News Limited, ABC, SBS - any other media organisation in Australia - got this information before? Why have we relied on an organisation with small resources to get it, so that Australians know what our government is doing in our name?"
One of the things that's been very clear, in the last year particularly, is how the Australian government - the Labour government - utterly failed to support Julian Assange publicly, accused him of committing illegal acts, which they had to apologise for because that was false; and most importantly and shamefully, have been doing the bidding - as every Australian government has done since 1945 - of their boss not in Canberra, but in Washington DC.
The Labour government, whether it's Julia Gillard or whoever runs Australia, needs to realise that Australians don't appreciate being told how to behave towards our own citizens from a foreign power.
Antony Loewenstein, author of "The Blogging Revolution", is a Sydney-based independent freelance journalist, author, documentarian, photographer and blogger. He has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Guardian, Juan Cole, Mondoweiss, Washington Post, New Statesman, Huffington Post, The Daily Star, The National, Al Akhbar English, Dawn, Haaretz, The Nation, BBC World Service, Adbusters, Al Masry Alyoum, Tehelka, Sydney's Sun-Herald, New Zealand Herald, Sydney Ideas Quarterly, The Australian Financial Review, Melbourne's Age, Brisbane's Courier Mail, Canberra Times, Online Opinion, ABC Unleashed/The Drum, Amnesty International Australia, Green Left Weekly, Eureka Street, Kill Your Darlings, Tikkun, Adelaide's Advertiser, The Bulletin, Znet, Overland, Sydney PEN, The Big Issue, Counterpunch and many others.
See more at antonyloewenstein.com/bio/