LeakSource.wordpress.com Julian Assange spoke today to a gathering in Melbourne organized by the WikiLeaks Defence Committee and the Australian Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, who presented Assange (via his lawyer) with his membership card in the union as a journalist. His filmed address, played to a free-speech forum at Federation Square in Melbourne, touched on a number of WikiLeaks' guiding principles as well as on immediate political pressures on the organization and on Assange himself. Repeatedly, he united those two concerns, principled and practical "We at WikiLeaks recognize the difference between secrecy and privacy. ... We believe in transparent power, not in transparent people." Julian Assange has called on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to bring him home ahead of his extradition hearing in London on Monday on alleged sex crimes committed in Sweden. Assange said that "Julia Gillard should be taking active steps to bring me home and protect our people". Ms Gillard last year described Assange's role in the worldwide publication of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables as "illegal", two weeks before an Australian Federal Police investigation found he had not committed a crime in Australia. The US has been investigating whether it can charge Assange. "She (Ms Gillard) should be contacting the US embassy and demanding that it back off," Assange said. "And it is interesting how some politicians single out my staff and myself for attack while saying nothing ...