Julian Assange addresses the UN - transcript

Good on you mate.....  

*update:

Transcript here. Some of it:

I want to tell you the story of a young American soldier in Iraq.

The soldier was born in Cresent Oaklahoma to a Welsh mother and US Navy father. His parents fell in love. His father was stationed at a US military base in Wales.

The soldier showed early promise as a boy, winning top prize at science fairs 3 years in a row.

He believed in the truth, and like all of us, hated hypocrisy. He believed in liberty and the right for all of us to pursue happiness. He believed in the values that founded an independent United States. He believed in Madison, he believed in Jefferson and he believed in Paine. Like many teenagers, he was unsure what to do with his life, but he knew he wanted to defend his country and he knew he wanted to learn about the world. He entered the US military and, like his father, trained as an intelligence analyst.

In late 2009, aged 21, he was deployed to Iraq.

There, it is alleged, he saw a US military that often did not follow the rule of law, and in fact, engaged in murder and supported political corruption.

It is alleged, it was there, in Baghdad, in 2010 that he gave to WikiLeaks, and to the world, details that exposed the torture of Iraqis, the murder of journalists and the detailed records of over 120,000 civilian killings in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He is also alleged to have given WikiLeaks 251,000 US diplomatic cables, which then went on to help trigger the Arab Spring. This young soldier’s name is Bradley Manning.

Allegedly betrayed by an informer, he was then imprisoned in Baghdad, imprisoned in Kuwait, and imprisoned in Virginia, where he was kept for 9 months in isolation and subject to severe abuse. The UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Juan Mendez, investigated and formally found against the United States.

Hillary Clinton’s spokesman resigned. Bradley Manning, science fair all-star, soldier and patriot was degraded, abused and psychologically tortured by his own government. He was charged with a death penalty offence. These things happened to him, as the US government tried to break him, to force him to testify against WikiLeaks and me.

As of today Bradley Manning has been detained without trial for 856 days.

The legal maximum in the US military is 120 days.

The US administration is trying to erect a national regime of secrecy. A national regime of obfuscation. A regime where any government employee revealing sensitive information to a media organization can be sentenced to death, life imprisonment or for espionage and journalists from a media organization with them. more

Also at RT are a couple of Questions and answers after the speech:

Fairfax Newspapers: The US military officially designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as ‘enemies of the United States’ through declassified US Air Force counterintelligence documents. In light of these reports, do you believe this vindicates your decision to seek asylum in Ecuador, and what do you think this says – the statements made by the Australian and American governments regarding this issue? 

Julian Assange: Those documents are now in full on the WikiLeaks website, just released tonight. They formed a part of the submission that we made to Ecuador. We had those documents for some months and of course were very concerned about them, but it was necessary to conduct, because of the sensitivities of some of the people involved in that investigation, to prevent their release until more recently. But yes, I encourage everyone to read those. It is an unusual position that I am in and the organization is in, and yes, it is difficult sometimes. 

But it is also completely absurd. I mean, these claims against us are absurd. For example, that the US military should designate me and / or WikiLeaks as ‘the enemy’ in its formal investigation – investigation which carries a death penalty offense – into a person who was alleged to have come to my extradition hearing. And in the same document, it speaks about the victim being that of society, when there is no allegation that any documents have been released or published by us. 

So I think that goes to the… to really quite sort of absurdist, neo-McCarthyist fervor that exists with some of these government departments in the US. I am hopeful that the White House over time is starting to shed that, but enormous wheels have been set in motion, as I described before, with over a dozen different US intelligence and investigative organizations churning through this, and it’s a very difficult process to stop once it starts. Even once everyone sees that it is completely absurd and counter to the values that the US should be trying to present to the world. more

Here is the PDF of those documents, from the WikiLeaks site:
http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FOI.pdf