John Jiggens
Dr John Jiggens is a citizen journalist. He was the founding editor of The Westender and The Cane Toad Times and currently works in the community newsroom at Bay-FM in Byron Bay. His PhD was Marijuana Australiana: Cannabis use, popular culture and the Americanisation of drug policy in Australia. He has published several books on the history of cannabis prohibition.
John's recent articles
9 January 2025
Tobacco prohibition by stealth?
Over the past five decades, drug policy in Australia has been contested between two main groups: the prohibitionists, who aim to ban social drugs by criminalising users and consumers, and the Harm-Reductionists, practitioners in the field who take a less censorious line on drug use and aim to educate users on how to minimise the harms associated with drug use.
21 December 2024
Reclaiming the radical spirit of the Eureka Rebellion
At 4am in the morning, Ballarat was dark and dismal. Nonetheless, about forty people, suitable dressed for the cold and the light drizzle, assembled at the Eureka Stockade Memorial Park to commemorate the 170th anniversary of the 1854 Eureka rebellion. The sky was clouded, and the Southern Cross was shrouded, but it was present in abundance on the flags, banners and clothing. The flag we should have had! The symbol of an independent Australia.
29 November 2024
Will Joe Biden pardon Julian Assange?
Julian Assange may no longer be behind bars, but his conviction casts a shadow over press freedom and the safety of journalists everywhere—a wrong Assange and his supporters world-wide are determined to set right by overturning his wrongful conviction via a presidential pardon from Joe Biden.
5 November 2024
The Queensland elections and the youth crime crisis
“The basic facts about youth crime in Australia, including Queensland, is that the number of young people getting into trouble with police has been going down every year.” - Ross Homel, Foundation Professor in Criminology, Griffith University.
10 July 2024
Julian Assange's fifty-third birthday party
A week after Julian Assange’s release from Belmarsh prison, a boisterous gathering of 200 very happy Assange supporters packed the St Kilda Bowls Club in Melbourne to celebrate Julian Assange’s 53 birthday on July 3. Assange, who was in seclusion still recovering from his ordeal, did not attend.
1 July 2024
The legacy media hate Julian Assange
It is often said that the reason the legacy media hate Julian Assange so much is that they are jealous of Assange’s rock star status. But it is much more than that. Not only did Assange make the MSM look dishonest; by reinventing Fourth Estate journalism with WikiLeaks, Julian Assange challenged the control of the narrative that is the source of the power of the legacy media.
23 May 2024
UK’s legal process a form of ‘psychological torture’, as Assange battles US
John Shipton has been in London, observing his son Julian Assange's appeal against extradition to the United States.
15 May 2024
World War III and The Grand Chessboard
Imagine being Tony Blinken, and facing the arduous responsibility as US Secretary of State to rule the globe! This seems a daunting task, but fortunately, Blinken doesn’t have to strain his brain too much because he has a manual already written to instruct him.
5 April 2024
David McBride versus Four Corners
On Easter Saturday, a friend and I drove down to Mullumbimby to hear Afghan war crimes whistleblower David McBride speaking at the Mullumbimby RSL. The previous Monday, I had watched the Four Corners program about David McBride, called Rules of Engagement. My friend hadnt seen it, so we listened to it on the iPhone as we drove along. There was one heavily ironic moment in Rules of Engagement when ABC journalist Dan Oates says he hates it when journalists make themselves the centre of the story.
28 March 2024
Extradition looms for Julian Assange
The UK High Court has delayed the extradition of Julian Assange to the US for a further three weeks, requesting the United States give assurances that Assange will be protected by First Amendment free speech rights, that he wont be discriminated against as an Australian citizen, and that he will not face the death penalty. The High Court judgment said that if those assurances were not given by the United States, leave to appeal will be given to Assange, and there will then be an appeal hearing.
7 March 2024
The persecution of Julian Assange
I see in the persecution of Julian Assange, a parallel with a technique put together by the United States in the destruction of Iraq that they called shock and awe, wherein all of the institutions of state were destroyed and plundered, with the exception of the department concerning itself with the production of oil. Now the parallel in publishing, in journalism, is Julian Assange. Every aspect of his life is absolutely destroyed. His family, facing bankruptcy in pursuit of some sort of freedom or justice for Julian, and intimidation and crushing, absolute crushing of the courage. There's just no chance...
4 March 2024
Night Falls in the Evening Lands: The extradition of Julian Assange
As we await the UK High Court decision on Julian Assanges extradition to the US, the implications of Assanges persecution and the repercussions for human rights, journalism, peace and justice will be explored at the conference Night Falls in the Evening Lands: the Assange epic, which will be held in Melbourne on March 9.
17 February 2024
USUKA: The hidden history of AUKUS
The Australian Citizens Party (ACP) have written to the National Anti- Corruption Commission (NACC), asking them to investigate former Prime Minister Scott Morrisons decision to join private companies who will profit from the massive defence expenditure resulting from Morrisons decision to establish AUKUS a decision the ACP characterised as extraordinary, unilateral and secretive. Dr John Jiggens details the hidden back story of AUKUS.
16 February 2024
Andrew Wilkie: Assange must be allowed to return to Australia
The majority of the Australian parliament, including the Australian government and the Prime Minister are of the view that regardless of what you think about Julian Assange, the fact is he's been incarcerated in one way or another for twelve years or so. The matter has gone on long enough that the extradition should be dropped and he should be allowed to return to Australia. Says Andrew Wilkie in an interview with Dr John Jiggens.
15 February 2024
Historic vote in Australian parliament on Julian Assange
Wednesday, February 14, turned out to be an unanticipated Happy Valentines Day for Julian Assange supporters. The Australian House of Representatives passed a motion introduced by Tasmanian Independent, Andrew Wilkie on behalf of the Parliamentary Friends of Julian Assange, urging the US and the UK to bring their prosecution of Julian Assange to a close, and allow him to return to his family and home in Australia.
22 January 2024
The ghost of Julian Assange
Despite being detained, silenced, and hidden from public view in the maximum security Belmarsh prison for the past five years, as the day of his extradition draws near, the spectre of Julian Assange looms ever larger over the politics of the AUKUS lands.
10 January 2024
John Pilger, maverick journalist (1939-2023)
In a speech he made in Sydney in 2011, defending Julian Assange, John Pilger recalled how it was always impressed upon him when he was young that Australia was a brave country: that we stood up to authority, and we stood up for justice. Such national myths were at best half-truths, Pilger said, but in our political life, there was scant evidence of this. But now and then, an Australian came along who made such myths seem true. Julian Assange was such an Australian, he said.
21 November 2023
Crown successfully overturns Nuremberg war crimes principles in Australian court
In direct contradiction to the 1945 Nuremberg trials, the Crown successfully argued in the prosecution of Afghan Files military whistleblower David McBride for breaching the Defence Forces Act that the sole duty of an Australian soldier is to follow orders. An Australian soldier does not serve Australia, or the Australian people or the public interest. The final blow for McBride fell last Thursday, when the court was closed down under Australias National Security Act, and a large contingent of men in suits confiscated all the files that the Defence had planned to use to argue McBrides public interest defence.
20 November 2023
Who do you serve? The non-trial of David McBride
Today I serve my country. And the question I have for you, Anthony Albanese is, Who do you serve? - David McBride
1 November 2023
John Mearsheimer and the decline of US hegemony
It's very important to understand that what's happened is that the unipolar moment is in the rearview mirror. It's gone. We are now in a multipolar world
10 October 2023
David McBride and the Afghan files trial
Afghan war crimes whistleblower David McBride is facing a secret trial on November 13 that could result in him serving a life sentence for leaking classified information that formed the basis of The Afghan Files, a 2017 ABC expos revealing allegations of misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.
28 September 2023
Assange extradition: something you might expect from a totalitarian regime
Julian Assange may be only weeks away from being extradited to the US where he will face prosecution under the US Espionage Act that could see him imprisoned for 175 years, even though he is an Australian citizen, not a US citizen! With extradition so near, the campaign to save Assange has reached its highest pitch.
5 September 2023
Opposing US-led wars: can Australia become independent and peaceful?
The narrative about the inevitability of a war with China began to dominate US strategic thinking in the second decade of the twenty-first century.
29 July 2023
Are we on a path to war with China? An interview with David Shoebridge
One of the most extraordinary moments in politics in the last five years has been watching Anthony Albanese, notionally from the left of Labour, adopt, without any internal democracy within the Labor Party, without any public investigation of it, adopt wholeheartedly Scott Morrison's AUKUS plans It's perhaps one of the most extraordinary betrayals of the public interest and Labor's historic anti-nuclear platform that I can recall it's deeply dangerous, and it is leading us down a pathway to war.
27 May 2023
Bring Julian home
Over the past month, Australian pressure on the Biden administration to drop the charges against Julian Assange has grown significantly.
6 May 2023
A revolution in Journalism: WikiLeaks and Julian Assange
Speech at The Persecution of Truth conference
27 April 2023
The Persecution of Truth
The war on whistleblowers, WikiLeaks and truth will be examined at a conference called The Persecution of Truth at the State Library of Queensland on Sunday April 30th.
21 March 2023
The AUKUS orchestra, Julian Assange and Iraq
On Saturday, March 18, a small rally to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War gathered in a park outside the Lismore Memorial Baths.
14 March 2023
Championing war with China
In an extraordinary editorial that was labelled as warmongering by former prime minister Paul Keating, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) called for China to be labelled a clear and present threat, argued for the reintroduction of conscription and for long range missiles armed with nuclear weapons, and urged Australia to prepare for war with China in three years.
28 January 2023
Freeing Assange?
On New Years Day 2023, John Lyons, the Global Affairs Editor of the ABC, made the extraordinary prediction that within the next two months Julian Assange would be released.
10 December 2022
Kevin Rudd on The Avoidable War
Kevin Rudd lives in New York these days, but on November 18, he returned to his former hometown of Brisbane to speak about his most recent book, The Avoidable War: the dangers of a catastrophic conflict between the US and Xi Jinpings China at Brisbanes City Hall.
14 October 2022
Collaery demands Royal Commission on Timor Leste spy scandal
Just think of it. After years and years of assisting the Timorese resistance to have Witness K. come to my office and tell me something so marked with treachery, words still fail me. So immoral. So unethical. so counter to all of our national interests!
29 September 2022
Mexico honours Julian Assange
Julian Assanges family, his father John Shipton and his brother Gabriel Shipton, have returned from Mexico where they were invited to attend the celebrations of Mexicos Independence Day by the Mexican President, Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is affectionately known as AMLO from his initials.
4 August 2022
Dr. Strangelove in the Ukraine - US strategy in the Cold War against Russia
The RAND Corporation is a US think-tank that describes itself as a research organisation that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous.
4 June 2022
The Trial of Julian Assange: A story of persecution
Nils Melzer was UN Special Rapporteur on Torture between 2016 and 2022. In 2019 he began investigating the case of Julian Assange. The English language edition of his book, The Trial of Julian Assange, is the most well-researched account of the legal ordeals suffered by the WikiLeaks founder. A brave and an important book, it corrects the mainstream narrative substantially.
10 March 2022
Vale, Craig McGregor, 1933-2022
My friend and mentor, Australian journalist, writer and cultural critic Craig McGregor, died on January 22, 2022.
26 November 2021
Not just the corners: ABC assault on Assange undermines foundations of journalism
Demonised by governments, abandoned by his homeland, Julian Assange ends another year in captivity, a living rebuke to double standards in the media.
27 October 2021
Four Corners v Julian Assange: your ABC, their sneers
Who could imagine that a revered current affairs program could stoop to peddling slanderous allegations against an award-winning Australian journalist?