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Conversations with Coleman
WikiLeaks and Whistleblowing: An Exposé That Shook The World with Julian Assange (S3 Ep.24)
01:40:58
Today I'm going to try something new. Instead of publishing an interview that I did myself, or a Q&A where I answer your questions, I'm going to use my platform to publish an interview conducted by somebody else. Now, this requires a bit of an explanation. My friend Desh Amila, who's a filmmaker and producer, organized an event with Julian Assange in 2017. He filmed the event at the time and then forgot all about it until a few days ago when he came across the footage by coincidence. When Desh offered to publish this footage using my platform, I was hesitant at first, because I worry that publishing this on my podcast would give people the impression that I support Julian Assange's actions, or that I support WikiLeaks as an organization. So let me say this upfront - I'm agnostic about whether Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have done more good than harm for the world, as their supporters must believe. It's just not clear to me, and my publishing of this interview should not be taken b...
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- [00:00]
Julian Assange
SA.
- [00:31]
Coleman Hughes
Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. If you're hearing this, then you're on the public feed, which means you'll get episodes a week after they come out and you'll hear advertisements. You can get access to the subscriber feed by going to ColemanHughes.org and becoming a supporter. This means you'll have access to episodes a week early, you'll never hear ads, and you'll get access to bonus Q and A episodes. You can also support me by liking and subscribing on YouTube and sharing the show with friends and family. As always, thank you so much for your support. Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. Today I'm going to try something new. Instead of publishing an interview that I did myself, or a Q and A where I answer your questions, I'm going to use my platform to publish an interview conducted by somebody else. Now, this requires a bit of an explanation. My friend Desh Amila, who's a filmmaker and producer, organized an event with Julian Assange in 2017. He filmed the event at the time and then forgot all about it until a few days ago when he came across the footage. By coincidence. When Desh offered to publish this footage using my platform, I was hesitant at first because I worried that publishing this on my podcast would give people the impression that I support Julian Assange's actions, which or that I support WikiLeaks as an organization. So let me say this up front. I'm agnostic about whether Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have done more good than harm for the world, as their supporters must believe. It's just not clear to me, and my publishing this interview should not be taken by anyone as an endorsement, either of him or of WikiLeaks. As you all know, I'm a big defender of free speech and transparency, and because of that, you might expect that I would always take the side of the whistleblower who reveals important secrets held by governments or powerful corporations. For example, I had Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, on this show just a few months ago, and I gave her a very friendly interview because I thought that what she revealed about Facebook was clearly a net good for the world. Yet my support for free speech and transparency in general doesn't automatically extend to every specific release of hacked information, especially cases where that information could hurt people. When you reveal state secrets about a war that's still happening, it's possible that you're giving the enemy crucial information that could help them kill our soldiers. For instance, Julian Assange's 2010 leak of the Afghanistan war papers didn't redact all the names of Afghanis who were helping us. When these names were leaked, the Taliban basically said, thank you for giving us this list of names. We're going to kill all these people. Now, I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that was the gist. And Julian's response to this was to shift blame to the US Government for refusing to help him censor the sensitive information. Now, WikiLeaks irresponsibility in this vein came up again in 2016 when they released hacked emails and other materials from the Democratic National Committee servers. Among the info they released were credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, and passport numbers of Democratic donors, even small dollar donors. That's information that could have easily been redacted. Now, on the other side of the moral ledger, the Afghanistan leaks and the Iraq War leaks really did reveal ugly things that the coalition forces had done in terms of collateral damage and civilian deaths that had not been previously reported by the military or by the media. And the DNC leaks revealed that the DNC was hugely biased against the Bernie Sanders campaign. And these are all things that the public has a right to know and things that we might not know if not for those leaks. So in the end, I don't know if WikiLeaks has been a net good or a net harm for the world. And that's a conversation I'll have to continue another time. But I'm certain that their lazy approach to redacting information has hurt innocent people. So with that said, I present this never before seen interview with Julian Assange. Let me know what you guys think of it and let me know what you think of me using my platform to publish material by other people. Is this something you would want more of or would you prefer it if I just stick to publishing my own stuff? Let me know in the comments and enjoy the interview.
- [05:11]
Desh Amila
There he is. Hello.
- [05:18]
Julian Assange
Can you hear me?
- [05:20]
Desh Amila
The webcam's on, by the way. He can see you, so don't push him. All right, Julian, let's get right into it. What is your Gmail password? Okay, I didn't think it would be that easy.
- [05:39]
Julian Assange
You thought you might get somewhere with that question, but of course I don't use email.
- [05:43]
Desh Amila
Oh, okay. Well, can't blame the guy for trying. What actually is WikiLeaks these days? Because, you know, we. Is it just you? Do you have staff? What. What. What is the organization? How big is it? Do they. The people are there? Do they. Do you order them? Around. What is it?
- [06:00]
Julian Assange
Yeah, well, WikiLeaks is a small multinational publishing organization. We have people in every continent except Antarctica.
- [06:13]
Desh Amila
Disappointing.
- [06:14]
Julian Assange
We have, I don't know, a few million in Bitcoin in the bank which has been appreciating. It's quite hard to cash out actually.
- [06:25]
Desh Amila
What's that mean? What's that mean, Bitcoins?
- [06:29]
Julian Assange
Well, back when Bitcoin was start we had. This is a. It's a long story. We had a, and still have in part a banking blockade by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Diners Club, American Express, Discover, Swiss Post Finance and Western Union. And that banking blockade arose politically. It wasn't done within the legal systems entirely political representing the, on the one hand the connectivity within and between the US financial elite and the US security elite. And on the other hand a fear of regulation by those companies and therefore they self regulate in response to political pressure and erected a blockade against us which we litigated at the European Union and in the Icelandic courts where we managed to find a subsidiary of Visa and MasterCard and grab our teeth onto that took it to the Supreme Court. One knocked it down. We're suing for a few million in damages. Now we've won the case. Now it's just assessing the damages. So during that period, this very interesting and impressive new intellectual currency, purely intellectual, Bitcoin.
- [08:02]
Desh Amila
I know what Bitcoin are, but how much is that worth in terms of actual say American dollars?
- [08:08]
Julian Assange
Well, it's a few million. Okay, that makes sense in theory but I mean we collected it during this period and then it appreciated and we invested it in other Bitcoin things by about 9,000% and yeah, so we lost 97% of our income.
- [08:31]
Desh Amila
That's poor investment.
- [08:32]
Julian Assange
And at the same time we had to fight this enormous attack by the US government and effectively its proxies and supporters.
- [08:41]
Desh Amila
And are you the WikiLeaks Twitter account at the moment or is there other people doing it?
- [08:47]
Julian Assange
There's a rotating staff. It depends on the time of day. But you can blame me for anything that's there. I'm the editor and many people do.
- [08:58]
Desh Amila
Okay, look, obviously you live an unusual life locked in the Ecuadorian embassy. How do you actually spend your day? Like to help out at the embassy? What do you do?
- [09:10]
Julian Assange
Yeah, I mean I spend most of my day dealing with the difficulties of running an organization fighting a dozen different court cases, half of which have been about half which being taken against us, half of which we have taken against others. That's, you know, it's like running a newspaper as well as criminal cases. So it's quite involved. And then there's a lot of politics as well. There's politics inside the embassy. There's a big security situation which is, you know, people trying to infiltrate the embassy, trying to bribe the embassy staff, trying to bug the embassy. A number of those bugs have been discovered following people who come in and out of the embassy, setting up robot cameras around the embassy. So it's quite involved, quite an involved way.
- [10:07]
Desh Amila
On that note, how do the Ecuadorian embassy staff, the actual staffers there, how do they feel about you being there? I mean, they must have been really pissed when you got the Internet cut off, for instance. So like. So, like, how do they feel? Do you relate well to them?
- [10:20]
Julian Assange
They loved it. They loved it. I'm joking. But my fast Internet they managed to get hold of during the period where it was cut off for me.
- [10:34]
Desh Amila
Okay. Are you their IT guy?
- [10:37]
Julian Assange
They're a bit reluctant to hand it back.
- [10:42]
Desh Amila
Quite seriously. Do you do it for them?
- [10:45]
Julian Assange
Yeah, in part, I mean, but there's, you know, it's. The Ecuadorian embassy represents the Ecuadorian people, but it also represents the Ecuadorian state. So it is a, it is an embassy, it is a state apparatus. And so there, you know, there's, if you like, demarcation issues with embassy stuff versus my stuff.
- [11:16]
Desh Amila
Yeah, sure. Do you get visitors?
- [11:20]
Julian Assange
Yeah, we get visitors. It's a bit involved security situation to get people in. They have to be checked out, booked in 24 hours in advance, many passports. It's coming into an embassy, coming into an embassy, which can sometimes be hard, but it's also coming into an embassy that's in the middle of an extremely serious intelligence siege which the UK government admits, just on the police component of that siege, it is spending £4 million a year.
- [11:55]
Desh Amila
In all seriousness, you've been in a situation when you get less exercise than a high security prisoner for the last five years. What's the stuff that you miss the most that you might not have expected to miss?
- [12:10]
Julian Assange
Yeah, I don't really want to go into it. I don't like creating any kind of general deterrent. So I think people should just assume actually that intellectually I'm, you know, my mind is in the world doing amazing things actually, frankly, amazing things. And that's very exciting.
- [12:34]
Desh Amila
There you go.
- [12:39]
Julian Assange
But I don't want to create a kind of, you know, there's such an expectation that if you create difficulties, expose the truth and our history about big powers, then it is a form of natural justice that you suffer. It's not a form of natural justice. That's complete rubbish. It's a form of artificial, corrupted justice where the supposed ideals of the justice system are thrown to the wind because of politics. But it's not an ideal, and we shouldn't push that. You know, there's a. If you look at an organization like the aclu, and we've been guilty of it as well, to be fair. But if you look at an organization like the aclu, it's in the kind of the business of securitizing government malfeasance and the suffering that derives from it. So if you look at the appalling treatment of Chelsea Manning, one of our alleged sources, which we have had an amazing victory with, getting clemency. But if you look at that abusive treatment, there's a desire by many people to project forth the image of the sufferer and the injustice of the suffering person. But, you know, actually, both the aclu, I don't mean to pick on them particularly, but they're just an example. But the, the ACLU plus the Department of Justice and the Pentagon are pushing the same narrative, which is that if you expose the truth, you will suffer. And that's a problem because nearly all of our sources, you know, 999 of a thousand don't have any problems. They're invisible because they're, you know, they do their amazing act and contribute knowledge to all of us and do something very important for WikiLeaks, and then they go back to being within their bureaucracies or companies or computer hackers and go on and live their happy and now slightly more fulfilled, slightly more paranoid lives. And it all works out really well. But we don't hear about them, we don't see them, and we don't perceive them. We only perceive people that are in public, which the supporters amplify as examples and which governments and states and big corporations also amplify as negative examples to set a general deterrent.
- [15:38]
Desh Amila
Okay, we've talked about, we've mentioned aclu, which is the American context. You've mentioned the English police, but obviously you're an Australian citizen. You've been in this embassy.
- [15:48]
Julian Assange
Well, I'm not sure. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm not.
- [15:50]
Desh Amila
Oh, okay. Yes. At one point in time, you're an Australian citizen. You, you've been this embassy for five years.
- [15:58]
Julian Assange
Like, what does that, what does that phrase mean? I don't, doesn't have any practical meaning for me.
- [16:05]
Desh Amila
I. You can disregard it. My question is. My question is, you've been in the.
- [16:10]
Julian Assange
Embassy for five years, I am an Australian culture. An Australian. Sure. And my relatives are Australian.
- [16:18]
Desh Amila
Okay. And you've.
- [16:19]
Julian Assange
Australian citizen is a technical concept which in my case is completely meaningless.
- [16:27]
Desh Amila
I get a strong sense that you're going to want to answer the question I'm about to ask, which is you've been there for five years. That's basically 12 Australian governments. What, throughout all these governments, what have any of them done to help you out? And have any of them been different to the other ones, or has it been a consistent line the whole time?
- [16:50]
Julian Assange
Nothing. Nothing, I suppose. I mean, none of them have been helpful. None have been helpful at all. There's a question whether any of them did anything at all. Very briefly, when Rudd was Foreign Minister, he forwarded to us one document where the Ministry of Foreign affairs had asked the Swedes some questions about interpretation of what might happen to me, which was forwarded. That's it? That is it. Well, what else happened? One more thing. They brought me a pen when I was in prison and some paper.
- [17:29]
Desh Amila
I hope the pen didn't leak.
- [17:31]
Julian Assange
That's it.
- [17:33]
Desh Amila
Okay. All right.
- [17:37]
Julian Assange
And then not even that pretense. I mean, we can understand, of course, what Rudd was doing, but I mean, it's good that he was doing it, which he was creating some internal paper trails, which we heard that he encouraged us and other journalists to foyer communications between him and Gillard. And so we get hold of these internal communications where he was saying, as foreign minister, look, the situation with Assange is not very good, and of course, Gillard doing nothing about it, so you can understand what that was about. But it's good that he saw that there was something in the Australian public that wanted that and had the courage to take the opportunity. But since that point, nothing. And Bob Carr says in his autobiography that he lied. He said that I had received more constant support than any other Australian and admitted that it was a lie and he had made that lie, he says, in order to, quote, needle me.
- [18:46]
Desh Amila
Well, he won't be appearing on this show because there's no more secrets, no more lies.
- [18:51]
Coleman Hughes
The.
- [18:52]
Julian Assange
I have to say, it's not just me. I mean, Australia doesn't really exist, you know, as a. As a state. It doesn't actually exist.
- [19:02]
Desh Amila
What about Pauline Hanson? Because she's your new mate. So has she called you at all?
- [19:08]
Julian Assange
It's a colonial country that doesn't have a sense of itself. It doesn't have its own land, it doesn't have its own language, it doesn't have its own foreign policy. So you have to understand, yes, there's an Australian culture kind of disappearing, perhaps quickly, but there isn't actually an Australian state in the sense that there are. In the sense that there is, say, an Ecuadorian state or Russian state or an American state. There's not an Australian state.
- [19:42]
Desh Amila
Look, that confuses me a little. So I'm going to move on. You've been through over the last five years quite well, more than five years. Last 15 years. Quite a road. You, at one point in time were kind of the darling of the left. Then during the last election, you became kind of the darling of the right. I mean, how do you feel about that? To be loved, so loved and hated alternately by the same people? And is there anyone who's really loved you, who you've just had absolutely no time for? Who's the person you're most embarrassed to be loved by?
- [20:17]
Julian Assange
David Duke, I guess, but I don't. You know, he trolls, basically. He says that he appreciates someone for doing something, and he's done it to many, many people because he knows exactly what will happen, which is the media will pick it up and go, oh, my God, David Duke said something nice about this guy. And therefore he'll get his name into the. He'll get his name into the press. But fair enough.
- [20:46]
Desh Amila
How would you describe your own political leanings? Because there's plenty of people on the.
- [20:50]
Julian Assange
Internet that was politically helpful, obviously, but I don't mind being liked by people, even bad people. You know, it's. It's not a. It's. It's.
- [21:06]
Desh Amila
Look.
- [21:09]
Julian Assange
When Vladimir Putin's government gave Edward Snowden asylum, which I was. I mean, I wrote the application, that was the right thing to do. For all the other problems that that government has internally and a few externally, that was the right thing to do. And so that should be applauded. Similarly, when Sarah Palin went from saying, I should be hunted down like the Taliban, we had published her emails. She was using a private Gmail account, in effect, who knows whether it was intentional, but in effect evading the Alaskan Freedom Information Act. She was governor of Alaska. She came out about a month ago and apologized and, and much more interestingly, recommended that people watch Citizen four about mass surveillance. So that's the right thing to do. So she should be applauded for actually having the courage to not stick with a previous position, having the courage to overturn a previous position, which can make you look hypocritical, but it's the right thing to do.
- [22:30]
Coleman Hughes
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- [24:28]
Desh Amila
Okay, now the reason you're there, of course, is because Sweden wanted to haul you in for questioning over the sexual assault claims. Not charges, mind you. Claims.
- [24:37]
Julian Assange
It's not the reason why I'm here. I don't know where people get this crap from. Actually I do. I know exactly where they get it from.
- [24:46]
Desh Amila
They get it from me, actually. That's where again, this crap they get it from.
- [24:49]
Julian Assange
Very fake news.
- [24:50]
Desh Amila
Yeah, well, my question is this. The Swedish prosecutors finally interviewed you recently, so. Which was what? At least I was led to believe that they were supposed to be trying to do. So what happens then? Is it over? What's the state of the Swedish?
- [25:11]
Julian Assange
It's all rubbish. It's an entirely political situation. I have a lot of cases if you want to talk about the Swedish case. Many people in Western press do, because it Suits their narrative and it involves the word sex. I was cleared in 2010. I was cleared by the chief prosecutor of Stockholm, found to be innocent. The case was closed and dropped. I've never been charged. It's at the stage of preliminary investigation. It's always been at the stage of preliminary investigation. And they outrageously keep a detention order for, quote, questioning going, have done everything in their power to not actually question, haven't questioned.
- [25:54]
Desh Amila
So that's still there. That order's still on, even though they've already talked to you.
- [25:57]
Julian Assange
Yeah, right. Okay. And just, and just in November, then went to the Supreme Court in Sweden. They were going to lose the case. So they flipped and then said, okay, we will. They then took another a year of feet dragging and finally they actually did the kind of. The first thing that you're meant to do in a case which is if there's allegations against someone, which there aren't really, but if the kind of state has at least allegations, then you might actually ask them if they're true. And that's done the first time in November. First time in November, yeah.
- [26:33]
Desh Amila
Yeah. I wasn't so much asking so much about the case itself, so much as just interested in your state in terms of what you're facing from here on in. So that hasn't changed. America hasn't charged you yet. Right. You just hear that there might be charges at some point in time.
- [26:52]
Julian Assange
This is complete nonsense. We have had what the Australian government says in its own diplomatic cables is a case of unprecedented scale and nature. That's Australian diplomats reporting back to Canberra. Against me, a grand jury which has sucked in people from all over the world, which has employed informants, which has sent plane loads of FBI and prosecutors to different countries to interrogate people, to fit people out with wires and so on to spy on me. It's well documented. It is admitted by the US Government. It's been multiple times on the front page of the New York Times that it's going. It's last admitted that it all continues in 2017. Now, whether they have already created their seals indictment or not. They refuse to say that. They say that there is, quote, pending law enforcement proceedings. They refuse to say whether they have filed their sealed indictment or not. They refuse to say whether they have already filed the extradition request to the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom refuses to say whether they have already received the extradition request or not. The United Kingdom refuses to reveal to journalists correspondence between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department of Justice as to whether there is a sealed extradition order that has already come into uk. The natural state of affairs is a grand jury issues sealed indictment. A sealed indictment is turned into sealed extradition order and is sent. Now whether they have sent it, whether they have activated when they want to activate it, that's all a matter of political timing. But it's absolutely clear that either a sealed indictment has or already been filed in a sealed expedition request. Alternatively, there is a virtual one just waiting for the, for the right political timing. But all their actions in response to our lawyers, in response to the public, etc. As exactly as if they have a sealed indictment.
- [28:58]
Desh Amila
Okay, and meanwhile you've got the Ecuadorian opposition leader they're going to election in a couple of days and then Ecuadorian opposition leader, if he wins, he's chucking you out, right?
- [29:08]
Julian Assange
Yeah, Lasso, there's another one, he's a conservative banker, we published a lot of cables about him. Funny that didn't make any friends there, I guess, but he's been in and out of the US Embassy repeatedly trying to get, you know, assistance from the United States.
- [29:30]
Desh Amila
So if you're guessing where you're going to be in 12 months, what would you guess?
- [29:36]
Julian Assange
I don't know. I don't know. The polling on the Ecuadorian election suggests they have a French system. So they have a initial round and then a runoff if the candidate doesn't get above 40%. The polling suggests that no candidate will get above 40%, will go to runoff, goes to runoff. It will go to run off with the government candidate Lenin and the opposition leader, this banker Lasso. It's quite on the cards that Lasso could win in that context because the opposition can then unify around a single candidate, whereas the government forces have already unified around the government candidate who's polling about 32% presently.
- [30:29]
Desh Amila
Okay.
- [30:31]
Julian Assange
I mean it shouldn't be a matter of politics. I'm a refugee, arguably possibly the best known refugee. And I have a UN refugee card. I have refugee status and that's a matter of law. It's a matter of so called binding international legal agreements and a matter for Ecuadorian law. It's not a matter of presidential whim.
- [30:59]
Desh Amila
I'm not sure you know this, but refugees aren't very popular in the world at the moment, so that might not help you much.
- [31:06]
Julian Assange
Yeah, well, sure. By the way, it shouldn't be a matter of presidential whim. It's not in law. A matter of presidential whim, if it comes to that. Of course, you know, we will take what actions, we'll take what actions.
- [31:22]
Desh Amila
That we can, by the way, Brisbane, if you guys want to write some questions, we're going to have questions from anyone here, but also from you. They'll bring them up to me and I'll ask them. So please, please write questions. Let's talk about the general sort of ideology of leaking for a little while. I've done a fair bit of research for this interview. I've read almost a third of your Wikipedia entry. It is extremely long and it's not very good.
- [31:50]
Julian Assange
I mean, I'm not going to be one of these people that complains about the Wikipedia entry. I am, I am be one of those people. I am. No, I just find it very interesting because we did a lot of experiments with this. We're called WikiLeaks. Right. So we did experiments to try and get crowdsourced analysis of leaked documents. It didn't work in a kind of. In that Wikipedia way that I hoped it might not. The documents, we'd verify them with the analysis that basically when something is a political matter, arguably when it has clear effects on power, then those people who have the most incentive to deal with political ideas, accusations go and do that. And that can include hiring fleets of PR teams to engage in black PR on Wikipedia. And so if you look at all the political topics on Wikipedia, the final outcome represents the number of people on one side of the equation trying to edit an article, number of people on the other, plus one more factor, which is the types of groups that have made their way up through the Wikipedia administrative chain. So when there's a conflict, people in this administrative hierarchy can pick one side or another. So you often, yeah, Wikipedia articles about non political topics. Me very good about political topics. It represents those clash of forces and who has the numbers and who has the resources to invest and who has managed to infiltrate or naturally be in this chain of hierarchy.
- [33:53]
Desh Amila
To be fair, you've brought us a lot of insights tonight, but one of them is not that we Wikipedia could be inaccurate. I think we all know that we're pretty much across Wikipedia being dodgy.
- [34:04]
Julian Assange
Look, the press is very, very, very inaccurate, very accurate, very fake news.
- [34:10]
Desh Amila
Yeah, but what I'd like to know.
- [34:13]
Julian Assange
When the narrative of fake news came out and was then taken up by the effectively by the neoliberal press and pushed around because they considered, I guess, Macedonian kids riding in their bedrooms a challenge to their status and economics, I could see exactly where that was going and was rather happy about it. WikiLeaks is very happy that there is a narrative about fake news out there because we have a perfect record of having never got it wrong in, in terms of authentication. So we see this would flip around immediately on the mainstream press. So yeah, Wikipedia is filled with errors in politics, but actually your average article in the mainstream press is probably worse.
- [35:06]
Desh Amila
Sure. What I found though, no matter where you look around the Internet, one thing you don't see a lot of are descriptions of what WikiLeaks is actually aiming to do. What's the purpose of WikiLeaks? What's your goal?
- [35:19]
Julian Assange
You know, I was thinking about this the other day that you don't see that very much, even though I've gone on about it at length. And maybe that's the problem. Well, so I share with this audience some of my thinking on this problem and maybe there needs to be a transition. So what I first said, have been saying for years, is that, you know, that you can't build a just civilization out of falsehoods. You can't build anything out of falsehoods, really. You can't build a, you know, a skyscraper out of plasticine. You can't build a just civilization out of lies. And so at the moment I say that basically all our political theories are bankrupt. And the recommendations that flow from those theories are therefore just not really well grounded. And why is that? Because they don't understand how modern institutions actually behave. And if you're trying to come up with political programs to regulate how modern institutions should behave and reform them and work out what kind of society you want and what the laws should be, well, you've got to understand what you're working with. And people don't understand that because institutions are largely opaque. And they, even when we do glean some insights from them, not through WikiLeaks, but traditionally, they pump out so much rubbish that it dilutes the truth as well. So WikiLeaks is a designed to counter that tendency. It's a kind of quaint old fashioned enlightenment project to produce the base ingredients that you need for rational discourse. Okay, I think that's, that's basically being too abstract. Now. There's lots of things that immediately flow from it, such as if, such as systematic abuse, in order to be systematic needs to have a accurate chain of command and for abuse to occur at scale, you need things to be distributed. So that means it's quite hard to respond to WikiLeaks by just simply taking things off paper. If you do that, you can do that, but it will be in a relatively narrow area if you do it. Anything that's systematic, there's Going to be some records of it like there was in Holocaust, for example. Now we like to introduce a chilling effect into institutions that they cannot be confident that any proposed idea that involves some kind of systematic injustice we won't get hold of either directly or because we've incentivized and encouraged this whole phenomena. And I think that's an extremely positive, immediate thing. Okay. We also publish other things where innocent people have been released from prison based on what we've published, holding our documents over their head as they walk out of prison and of course different forms of political situations and contribute to academic research. But ultimately I think that's probably all too complex and too abstract and as maybe a narrative that worked 10 years ago. But the way the world is moving now is to a simpler rhetorical form where everything, I suppose, has to be tweetable. Every concept has to be tweetable. So I think, yeah, number one, we believe in the virtuous civilization comes from knowledge. Number two, that we work to promote the rights of people to have knowledge, to share knowledge, to communicate knowledge, to publish knowledge. And number three, that we're opposed to war and that war is the most unjust thing that civilizations do. And that wars almost uniformly in democracies and in dictatorships started by lies. There's very few that are not started by lies. Lying and falsehoods are essential ingredient in starting war, which tells you that populations don't like war. And the collary is that the truth is what keeps the peace and what starts peace. And so we don't believe people should be killed in wars. And we think knowledge is the best way to facilitate that.
- [40:50]
Desh Amila
Okay, on the question of lies and on the question of lies and truth, how can you know if someone has leaked you something which is basically an accurate document, but then smuggles an Easter egg in which is inaccurate? Like how can you tell that kind of thing?
- [41:09]
Julian Assange
Yeah, I mean everyone can create these hypotheses. But WikiLeaks has a 10 year perfect record of authentication across a million documents. It's not a million separate publications, but several thousand, several thousand separate publications. So in terms of the proof that our forensics and techniques and skepticism and gut and weighing it all up is correct, we have a record. If you want to talk about how that's done technically. Well, if you look at say, okay.
- [41:48]
Desh Amila
It'S okay, you look at, say that.
- [41:50]
Julian Assange
The Podesta emails that we publish, well, we had to reveal one of our secret spices, I suppose because someone else discovered it as well, which is that in modern email systems A cryptographic signature is added to the emails as they pass, say, through Gmail. And this cryptographic signature is mathematical proof that it hasn't been changed since the point that it went through that system. So, yeah, these are the kind of tricks we use. It's kind of cool that it's not every. We had lots of critics in the Democratic Party, liars in the Democratic Party, like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate, saying that what we published was not accurate, trying to intimate it, sometimes saying it directly. And of course, we could mathematically prove that they were liars. And it's not every day that you can mathematically prove that your critics are full of it.
- [43:01]
Desh Amila
Sure. Another area where there's controversy with regards to WikiLeaks is Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald in the past, who are all also interleaking, have criticized WikiLeaks for not curating as much as they say you should. Now, I believe that you have in the past in Cablegate, for instance, you let some cables go because you were worried about repercussions for people in the cables. What is your policy about curating and about redacting?
- [43:35]
Julian Assange
Well, I mean, Glenn Greenwald's a good friend and I suppose is the most politically aligned to me. If you look at his recent critique, both of the Trump administration and I think much more interestingly of the war of the intelligence services against the Trump administration. We're aligned. And Fred Snowden, I started his defence fund and got him out of Hong Kong and got him asylum. So, yeah, I wasn't too pleased when, in the context of Edward Snowden's pardon campaign to Barack Obama and US publishing the DNC publications which showed that the US Democratic Party had effectively rigged, fixed in various ways. No, maybe it's too strong. Had tilted the scale and engaged in various plots to subvert Bernie Sanders campaign, although their constitution obligated them not to. In that context, two days after we released the DNC materials, and the neoliberal press in the United States was looking for anything it could to attack Edward Snowden made this criticism, which. He's a smart guy, he knows exactly what that sort of thing does at that political moment. So it was not very happy with it. But yeah, this claims that WikiLeaks doesn't curate. It's complete nonsense. It doesn't understand what curation is, or modern curation, if there's a question about. Is WikiLeaks in the habit of publishing as much as it can? Nearly everything, nearly all the time. Yes, we do. Versus others who only publish select things. We're in the business of not engaging as much as we can of the corrupt business of censorship, which is a strong slippery slope which we saw in our dealings with various newspapers where we said you can and should redact cables if there's a credible risk that someone could be subject to retribution that might kill them. And of course they just then took that and use it to redact for all sorts of political reasons, even redacting, for example, Corrupt Energy Co. ENI, the company itself, from cables about Kazakhstan saying that it was corrupt. So we believe that that kind of process is very corrupting and that redactions should be minimal only when there's a really credible concern about human rights violations on that person and that the publisher, wherever possible, should explain that. And it should be for a limited period of time. Now, the Freedom of Information act in most places does give limited periods of time. You can't just keep. Well, governments do, but according to law, you can't just keep a document secret forever. You have 25 years rules or 30 year rules. And under Freedom Information act there must be an excuse each time to not reveal something. And we believe that the press shouldn't be more censorious than states. That's absolutely outrageous. And the consequence for the Snowden archive, which of course Snowden hasn't had control over since Hong Kong, we made sure he didn't have his archive when he got on the plane because we didn't want the Russians to get it. The consequence for that archive is that more than 97% of it has never been released to the public. More than 97% and lots of it won't be because the, the Intercept is in the United States. So we criticized Glenn in that and Snowden. And they have, you know, they have to defend their reputations.
- [48:00]
Desh Amila
Okay, so, so in terms of, in terms of lines and stuff, if there's, if there's, if there's a strong credible risk of someone being hurt badly or killed, then that falls into the zone where you're thinking about redaction. But say privacy issues. Privacy issues aren't a problem for a.
- [48:22]
Julian Assange
Limited period of time and still some point that the credible threat has elapsed.
- [48:28]
Desh Amila
Sure. But what I'm just trying to get across is because one thing WikiLeaks has been criticized for as well is the releasing the information about Turkish women voters, the outing the Saudi gay guys. Privacy issues aren't issues for you, is that right?
- [48:40]
Julian Assange
That story is made up 100%. We never publish Such information at all, ever. It is a completely made up story. It was spread in the context of our DNC publications as a kind of, you know, a diversion or attempt to critique WikiLeaks reputation as a publisher to distract from Hillary Clinton and her lot fixing the Democratic Party's campaign to make sure Bernie Sanders didn't win. It is made up 100%. It is completely false.
- [49:17]
Desh Amila
Okay, so has there been a leak that you've published that you've regretted in hindsight?
- [49:25]
Julian Assange
Well, probably everything.
- [49:28]
Desh Amila
It's an honest answer.
- [49:33]
Julian Assange
Let's think. No, no, there aren't. I mean, we have a public editorial criteria. So it's, you know, we accept. I mean, I don't want to get boring, but we accept material of diplomatic, political, ethical or historical significance that hasn't been published before, that is under some kind of threat that prevents its easy publish. So that's what we do. Something fits that, we'll publish it. We have lots of resource. There's obviously queues and we need to prioritize what comes out first. But as long as it fits that, we will publish it. Perhaps occasionally redacting things as little as possible. But if it's really required. We've got a question here from which it isn't. I mean, it almost never is. You have this look, I'm. Nothing that we've published has ever hurt anyone physically. The US government had to admit that under oath in the Chelsea Manning trial. So where does this narrative come from? It's a bullshit narrative. This bullshit narrative that. Hang on, bullshit. What happens to investigative journalists investigate the Pentagon killing hundreds of thousands or millions of people and reveal that, how it was done, why it was done, etc. And the response, it's just kind of kindergarten rhetoric. You know, in kindergarten and you say your mother stinks and then the kid in kindergarten turns around and goes, well, your mother stinks double. It's actually got nothing to do with your mother. Similarly, when we publish about the Pentagon causing harm, it sets up a rhetorical framework of harm. And that harm is the question under consideration. How many people has the Pentagon harmed? And therefore to create a diversion for, you know, at least 50 years, the Pentagon just has a standard response. Intelligence agencies have a standard response, which is they go, oh no, no, you're causing the harm. I mean, it's kindergarten stuff. And what's amazing is, you know, journalists, look, most journalists are pretty. They're not strategists. They're really not. They're kind of opportunistic snipers at the best. And they don't hold the line. They buy into this. They buy into this nonsense about information being dangerous. Information very, very rarely is dangerous. And not compared to the very, you know, not compared to what government does. I mean, how many people get killed by Fords every day? It's just, you know, it's a diversion.
- [52:38]
Desh Amila
Look, talking about kindergarten rhetoric that leads in nicely to the American election. So a couple of quick ones to set the scene. Firstly, did you receive any credible leaks in 2016 that were either anti Hillary or anti Trump that you didn't publish?
- [52:55]
Julian Assange
No.
- [52:55]
Desh Amila
Okay. And you said many times that Podesta leaks didn't come directly from Russia. But my question is, how could you know if they were?
- [53:04]
Julian Assange
I'd have to say, no, we did. I mean, we received, like, kind of some people saying things about people just claiming hearsay. Yeah, hearsay.
- [53:19]
Desh Amila
Yeah.
- [53:19]
Julian Assange
Okay. We don't publish hearsay. We publish official documents.
- [53:23]
Desh Amila
That's fair enough. So you've said that Podesta leaks didn't come directly from Russia, but how can you know if they weren't filtered down to you from Russia through a third party?
- [53:34]
Julian Assange
Well, look, we're not playing to any questions about our sources. So the first question was, you know, we normally. We occasionally give vague descriptions as to our sources where we think it's really essential to do so because there's enormous distractions, say, from the. In the publication or in this case, a climate arising, perhaps leading to some eventual future conflict with Russia. So, yeah, we don't like saying anything, but I thought in this case, eventually it was important to react to this allegation that our source was a member of the Russian state, was a Russian intelligence person. Okay. And so. Okay, no, sure. It's. It's not. Not someone from a state. This is not a state thing. Yeah, it's not someone from a state.
- [54:34]
Desh Amila
Okay.
- [54:35]
Julian Assange
So the goalposts were just moved, and then it was like, oh, well, does your source have any friends that are Russians? And of course, we. If we start going down this line, we're gradually describing our source, and that can be used to say, oh, eliminate this person or this person or this person as being our source.
- [54:57]
Desh Amila
Okay. Roger Stone, who is Donald Trump's D tricks buddy. He is good as a mouse.
- [55:04]
Julian Assange
What's the, like, pull back.
- [55:06]
Desh Amila
Yeah.
- [55:07]
Julian Assange
Where's all this coming from? It's coming from a corrupt Democratic Party apparatus which removed the popular candidate Bernie Sanders, who almost certainly would have won against Donald Trump, suppressed them in a corrupt manner, which. This is not just me saying this. After our publications, the top Five people in the DNC were forced to, to resign by a popular revolt within the Democrats, including the president, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. So that happened. The population saw what Hillary Clinton was saying to various banks and so on. We published her secret speeches, which were a journalistic holy grail. In the last 12 months, basically we just, we made it easier for Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager and the head of the dnc, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to communicate directly to the public, to get their message across in a pristine way, unfettered by, you know, the fake news press twisting it. And as a result, American people didn't like what they saw. So perhaps that contributed in some way to them losing the election. But whether it did or didn't, that apparatus within the Democratic Party is now fighting for its life against the reformation, the natural reformation that happens after a party loses an election. Where people go, you just lost an election against Donald Trump, against Donald Trump with your crazy policies, with your bullshit rhetoric because of your general incompetence as a campaign and therefore you guys are useless and corrupt and should be stripped of your positions. So no, no, no, the argument goes, we didn't lose it because of those reasons. We lost it because of WikiLeaks and even worse, we lost it because of Russia.
- [57:22]
Desh Amila
Yeah, the reason I'm sort of drilling down here is obviously because it's in the news at the moment. So I'm just trying to get, get out this, get out your, your side of this. Roger Stone, who is associated with the Trump campaign without actually being on the Trump campaign, was boasting five days before the first WikiLeaks.
- [57:41]
Julian Assange
What? What is, Sorry, set up the question.
- [57:43]
Desh Amila
Yes, the question. Yeah, yes, you know what's coming five days before the first WikiLeaks email, the Podesta leaks. Roger Stone said something's huge coming. Huge is coming from WikiLeaks. Did you guys have any contact with him or did he find it out from somewhere else?
- [58:03]
Julian Assange
We had no contact with Roger Stone. He's just channeling what our public statements were in the media, that things were coming. What is Roger Stone famous for? Tell me, what is he famous for?
- [58:16]
Desh Amila
Is famous for dirty tricks.
- [58:21]
Julian Assange
Translated lies. Yes, the guy is just famous for inserting himself in every situation.
- [58:29]
Desh Amila
Yeah.
- [58:30]
Julian Assange
And you know, he said that we were going to publish a whole lot of stuff on Clinton on October 14th, for example. No, we weren't. That was our 10 year anniversary. We had our 10 year anniversary. It was just our 10 year anniversary. Doesn't have any insight whatsoever. I think that there's some. That we might have some mutual acquaintance, a guy I've never even met, which is a radio broadcaster at wbai. I mean, I have, you know, look, Jennifer Robinson, my lawyer, an Australian lawyer, was living with one of the people on the Clinton foundation board. So, you know, sure, I'm closer connected in that sense to Hillary Clinton.
- [59:32]
Desh Amila
Okay, so fast forward to now and we've got Trump in the middle of a leak frenzy. It's almost like the intelligence community of America have looked at what you guys did last year and said, yeah, we can do that. And they're just releasing it bit by bit by bit, just like you guys did with the Podesta emails. First of all, do you think they are copying your strategy? And secondly, how do you feel about that? Because the deep state are the guys you don't like?
- [59:57]
Julian Assange
Well, I mean, they're all going WikiLeaks, right? I just want to see them go full WikiLeaks, which is. I have a bit of a problem. Look, we'll get to the politics in a minute, which is extremely problematic. But in terms of the methodology, look, we publish pristine documents. We published, for example, pristine documents on Friday showing the actual CIA orders to penetrate the last French election their political parties and intercept the telephone calls and so on, steal their election strategies. So those are unarguable. Nothing like that has been published in relation to us or relation to Russia. We want to see things like that published. And these claims about Trump and Flynn, we want to see pristine documents that people can analyze and argue about. We don't see that there's no quote from that Flynn Russian ambassador telephone call, for example. Not even a quote, alleged quote. What There is is U.S. officials speaking to, you know, captive journalists in the U.S. press making one claim or another claim. And there's so many different claims from so many different angles. You know, they can't all be right. And so I think it's from a scientific journalism viewpoint, these things are not falsifiable. There's not enough there that it can be falsified. And so, yeah, I don't like that too much. I mean, sometimes there's enough there to start a discussion, which I guess is better than nothing.
- [61:47]
Desh Amila
Where do you think it's going? Like, what's your read on the situation? Because obviously, you know, a fair.
- [61:51]
Julian Assange
I love it. I mean, I think, I think it's. I think it's. Well, the intermediate, the process, I love. I think it's incredible that it's the deep state. The CIA, contractors, nsa, intelligence agencies, fisa Court, et cetera, if you like. The guys who consider themselves the permanent government of the US because they're always there no matter which government is elected, and who feel that they really run the show because they have the most knowledge and they're connected into coercive force because they. Well, the CIA has its own coercive force, but they also brief the military. Yeah, there's not been the scrutiny, not been such scrutiny of the deep state since the 1970s and the church Commission. I think that's a marvelous thing. It's also turning the new Republican base, perhaps some of the old Republican base, not the Republicans in Congress, who are very much aligned with the arms industries, but the new Republican base is becoming some kind of anti war, anti intelligence movement. Who could imagine a year ago that the Republican base would be concerned about the activities of the CIA, the nsa, mass surveillance, how, how easy it was to grab a warrant. Sorry, how easy it is to spy on someone without a warrant. The destruction of Syria and Libya and whether that was warranted and whether it's producing terrorism, so on. Who would imagine a year ago that that was possible? So I think that's very optimistic. Now that the intelligence agencies are making these moves against the newly elected government, I think is very problematic. And that the U.S. democratic Party, the liberal press egging them on and approving of it is even more problematic. And we could well end up with a situation where Trump is knocked off. Pence will take his place. Vice President Pence, one of the Republican old guard. And at the same time, the Democrats will all be piled up with the CIA. CIA approval rating has gone up to 32% amongst the Democrats, down to 2% amongst Republicans. And their Democratic base will also be the view that intelligence agencies and wars are great. So I think it's a very interesting time. We don't know which path it's going to go in. I think probably that the. Probably that the Pentagon will win in the Trump administration. And maybe Pence, you know, as a president of a state that has a large military intelligence apparatus, in fact the largest the world has ever seen, you have to keep power over the state. And what are your basic instruments to do that? Your basic instruments to do that are mass popular support. Mass popular support. The arrest power that comes from your ability to arrest people, principally through the FBI and courts, that will assist the FBI in arresting the military and the intelligence agencies, because the intelligence agencies have knowledge and I suppose the media, and you can feed knowledge to the media and therefore you can influence the population. You can also influence these players. So if you don't have the intelligence agencies on your side, and why doesn't Trump have them on his side? Well, principally because a patronage developed under Barack Obama and the CIA had as its number one project in terms of budget, the overthrow of the Syrian government. So about a billion dollars a year spent by the CIA on that. So you got, you've got. And that's been a project for six years. So we have a lot of people in CIA heavily invested in that. And also in terms of their external relationships with Saudi, Qatar, uae, Turkey. Yeah. So they're fighting like dogs to preserve their programs. And then you've got cold warriors and others who are adversarial with Russia or that's their beat. And they're elevating themselves by generating this conflict. So they're also opposed to this new government. And then, of course, you've got the Democratic appointees who just know they'll be purged anyway and have nothing to lose. So Trump, in response to that opposition by the intelligence agencies, is leaning on another part of the hard power of the state, which is the military. So he's now got four generals in key cabinet positions. And those four generals, well, three of them are pals of Mattis, General Mattis, who is also a general. Two of them fought with him in Iraq in the battle of Fallujah. So I think that becomes an unfiable caucus, which I think is very worrying. So you could end up with a situation where the cabinet becomes militarized.
- [68:16]
Coleman Hughes
It.
- [68:17]
Julian Assange
Is heading in that direction. The military are used to following chain of command, so they're more, the more they out of the gate, they start out as more responsive to the president, who is the ultimate commander in chief, in theory. It's a difficult situation. I think people need to think really seriously if they engineer a situation that is very accepting of intelligence agencies behaving in that way, and which will lead to a situation of. Of a military heavy cabinet and perhaps eventually with Pence as the president.
- [68:58]
Desh Amila
On that note, another pessimistic element is that as outraged as the Republicans are at what's happened to Michael Flynn and all the rest of it, I haven't heard one person proposing cracking down with tighter laws on surveillance. No one said that. They talk about outing the leakers. They never talk about actually controlling the people who are doing all the surveilling, which is a little bit depressing. But we do need to move on.
- [69:24]
Julian Assange
Not yet. Not yet. But. But maybe. Maybe.
- [69:28]
Desh Amila
Let's hope so. Do need to move on. We're going to get some questions from the audience now while people are lining up down there, I'll ask you a question or two from Brisbane, which I've got written here first of all. So guys, if you want to ask a question, please come up to the mic over there and I will ask you. Julian, while we're waiting for that, Nick Monaghan on Twitter asks how is WikiLeaks going to evolve over the next 10 years? What role will it play in the mass media?
- [69:58]
Julian Assange
Well, there's. What will the mass media become over the next ten years? I suppose. Well, it's the bigger question and what will be the, the nature of intermediation, of communication of positions and knowledge between people that's having amazing effects, which is leading to populist expression of various kinds. I mean, the Trump selection. I suppose that maybe the number one factor is that over the last eight years that the growth in wealth in the United States, about 2% per annum has gone to top 5% of the population, 95% of the population has had their didn't receive that growth or the growth has gone down. And the bottom 50% in income, it's gone down significantly. That's probably number one factor. But I think the second largest factor is the removal of traditional hierarchies from the communication of position to a degree, knowledge as well. So it allows why do revolutions happen in squares like the Winter Palace Square? What's the square got to do with anything? It allows people to see what the positions of others are and understand that they're not alone and that eventually that they have the numbers. And so social media principally is permitting otherwise marginalized groups like the working class in the United States to express themselves. Yeah. So where's that going? Well, the large intermediaries such as Facebook and Google, of course, now setting up strategies to stop that. And they're doing it in a politically acceptable way to begin with. They're doing it explicitly now in relation to the French election to stop the spread of quite fake news during the French election. But of course, people have to make a decision as to what this fake news is. It's not a mathematical algorithm making the decision, it's people. And therefore it's the elimination of fake narratives as described by those people who are appointed to the positions to judge. So we have an open discourse that leads inevitably to populism and then a restructuring by the intermediaries in that discourse to try and regain control over what narratives are likely to spread or can be spread. So WikiLeaks feed into that process. We're a provider of knowledge. I think over the longer term, it's a lot more automation from us because in many ways we're too popular. And it's a real burden to keep up this 100% accuracy record. It slows down publication, it reduces the number of publications we can do. And there's many cases where people want to make witness statements, for example, and they want to do it quickly in relation to something that's coming out. Our comparative advantage, which any group has to work within, our comparative advantage is that we know how to publish the unpublishable, the politically unpublishable. And we know how to do that from a technical perspective, and we know how to do it from a political perspective and a legal perspective. And which data centers in which countries do we have insiders in? And so on. So this permits us to construct any mechanism where publishing what is otherwise unpublishable is needed. And of course, we're interested in those things that people want to communicate publicly, not privately, but they want to communicate publicly with each other that otherwise is somehow censored from society.
- [74:51]
Desh Amila
Okay, we've got first question here.
- [74:53]
Julian Assange
Yeah, hi, Julian, my name's Jesse. Big fan. I just want to know what the one piece of information that you would want the public to know about, whether it's popular or hasn't yet been discovered on a public platform, is that you.
- [75:08]
Coleman Hughes
Would want us to take away, read.
- [75:11]
Julian Assange
And really learn and think about and.
- [75:14]
Coleman Hughes
Then move towards how do we do something?
- [75:18]
Julian Assange
How do we get known as a public group here today? What was the last part? What do we do? What's the one file piece of information you would want this public group to know? And then what does every individual do to make their voice heard? There isn't one piece. You know, the. What is special about WikiLeaks is that it's not just another damn story. It's not just another damn journalist putting their damn byline advertising themselves in their position on another damn story. There's billions of people in the world, millions of institutions. There's far more reality than there is press to digest and encompass reality. And then, of course, you know, they distort the reality for their own purpose and the purpose of their institution and within their cultural cul de sac and so on. So WikiLeaks provides raw history about how institutions actually behave and not how the institution wanted to communicate itself to the world, but rather how it was forced, for reasons of efficiency and hierarchy, to communicate its observations of itself and the world to itself. These were Communications that were not designed to manipulate you. Possibly they were designed to manipulate some people internally, but they were not designed, designed to manipulate the public. And therefore as someone that is in the public, you're not reading pre weaponized knowledge when you read a newspaper article. You are reading weaponized text that is designed to affect a person just like you. So I think that is the, yeah, the real beauty of WikiLeaks and it's in the scale. It is not one thing. It is that sea of information that treasure, intellectual treasure, that rebel library of Alexandria that you can go into. You know, last Christmas I was at the embassy and there hadn't been very many people and so I was looking on the Internet and thinking, you know, the Internet is boring. I felt like I'd read the whole Internet, which is obviously not true, but somehow, you know, each new thing was kind of like the, kind of like the last thing. And it felt like pre chewed food, not real, kind of lame. And so. Okay, I think I'll just read more of our stuff. We got so much stuff. I think I'll go and read, I think I'll read some cables from like when Mao died. What was the response to that? When Mao died and how was the US thinking that China would unfold? And so yeah, I found them and read them. And these are great distillations of history at the moment. And with WikiLeaks, it's also quite recent history. Now that said, do I have a favorite thing that we've published? Yeah, it's these big data sets. But do I have a favorite individual thing, a favorite cable? I do. It's a cable about how the head of NATO, Rasmussen, the last head, was appointed and there's two cables on it, you can look them up to search for WikiLeaks, RoJ TV. So Rasmussen, the head of NATO is a former Danish Prime Minister and he wanted to move from being Danish Prime Minister at the end of his term to being head of NATO. Now in NATO, the various NATO members have a veto on who can be the head of NATO. So Turkey said, well, we're not going to accept you to be head of NATO unless Denmark destroys Kurdish TV. Now RoJ TV is the largest Kurdish language broadcaster and was headquartered in Denmark, beaming up to Eurosat and then down to the Kurdish regions in Iraq, Turkey and Syria, Kurdistan. So a deal was done between the US Embassy, Barack Obama, the Turks, Rasmussen, the Danish intelligence agency PET and the Danish judiciary in the form of Danish prosecutor to take down Roj to look into going after in taxes to think creatively to maybe they could go after content that has been too biased, too Kurdish. And that's exactly what happened. They ended up knocking it off. And it's appealed now to the European Court of Human Rights. And those two cables are the star exhibit as to why their delicencing should be overturned. But Rasmussen got his plum job. So here we have so called pinnacle of liberalism and western democracy, Denmark, with a completely corrupted judicial process involved in destroying the largest broadcaster for an entire language group, the Kurds, so that the Danish Prime Minister can get a plum job in NATO.
- [81:40]
Desh Amila
Okay.
- [81:46]
Julian Assange
That's basically, it's like, you know, it's kind of all of western civilization. Just two cases.
- [81:53]
Desh Amila
Hi there, Julian, my name's Sammy. I've just got a very quick question.
- [81:56]
Julian Assange
It's a bit light, but I'm just wondering if you can tell me a bit more about embassy cat. Okay. My little cat, which is my little kitten, which is a big cat, is not around. Maybe someone will get him. Yeah, I mean my children, I have young children are worried about me. Obviously my relationship with them is very badly compromised, very badly compromised. But anyway, they got me this cat which is. Oh, look at that. Which is probably. He's not a good actor. He's a good cat. Yeah. It's just something psychologically. If you look at long term prisoners, lifers, they give them animals to look after. It is psychologically healthy. In fact I became a bit obsessed frankly with animals. So one of the, is the one thing I suppose I'll admit to missing which is animals, wild animals, domesticated animals. So some, occasionally we get like some salad, vegetables would be brought in and you know, there'd be a bug, a lady beetle or a slug, which I was delighted with. And I caught myself doing it and thought, you know this, this is really pathetic. This is like, you know, like the Birdman of Alcatraz or something where you like some, some prisoner is like petting a cockroach in the corner. But yeah, so I caught, I caught myself doing it. And I'm not so obsessed with the lady beetles now because I have a cat.
- [84:08]
Desh Amila
That's a good question. Yeah, thanks.
- [84:10]
Julian Assange
Hi Julian, my name's Grant.
- [84:13]
Desh Amila
Just have a question about the elite families of the United States, namely the Morgans, the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds.
- [84:21]
Julian Assange
Just wondering if you think that these families and elites of the world run.
- [84:27]
Desh Amila
The United States in some part and.
- [84:29]
Julian Assange
If so, what do you think is their agenda? They're influential. I don't think those very well known. Those Very well known family names. Their influence is overstated. There's a lot of other families that are not so well known that have very significant influence and industries and associations. Sorry, industries and institutions have more influence.
- [85:04]
Desh Amila
Okay.
- [85:07]
Julian Assange
But I mean, you're kind of right. There is a social mesh of family relationships, workplace relationships and cronyism that I don't know if I want to say largely decides, but is very influential in terms of what particular paths are chosen. G', day, Julian. You're looking considerably more tanned than usual. This one's on the topic of reasonable and open discussion. So you mentioned the perceived danger of truth, not to mention the media's futile attempt to ignore you. And in the past you've spoken about an element of McCarthyism in the political landscape. So with your unique view of the world and given the peak of identity politics, do you see these Alinsky tactics worsening or subsiding? I have to complain about the reference to Saul Alinsky. Now. Interestingly, Hillary Clinton did her PhD studying Saul Alinsky, interestingly. But actually I don't, you know, Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, for example. We read it. It's just, you know, it's like a much simpler version of the Art of War. It's really. I don't, I think far too much weight is placed on that by the, by the US Populist right. If you want to talk about identity politics and how that has infected the U.S. democratic Party and the middle classes in the United States, I think that's a much more serious issue. Very serious for the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has been in collapse for the last six years. It's not just in this election. Two thirds of governorships in the United States are held by mostly Republicans, but by parties other than the Democratic Party. It's collapsing at the governor level. Nearly two thirds, nearly 38 states are now held by the Republicans. There's a domination of Congress, including the House and the Senate. So why has that happened? Well, identity politics is one of the reasons, but I think a better description is a class description, that the relationships, the relationship between the Democrats and class was replaced by identity politics as Democrats professionalized into the upper middle class. Now, historically, okay, it's not quite right, but the Democrats obtained their power from a effective political union between the middle class and the working class. And that's changed. That's changed to an effective union from between the middle class and the wealthy class, middle class, wealthy class, with the working class being replaced by various identity politics groups. And that's not something that it's Simply something that doesn't have the numbers and is a bit politically incoherent. And so they have degraded and they should go under. They should and would naturally have a very important reformation after this election, but they haven't. Instead, they have diverted to answering those questions, diverted from answering those questions into trying to justify their loss and attack the incoming Trump administration, uniting the various different political strands that are not Republican. Hello, Julian. Nice to talk to you. Great admirer of your work. There's an Australian journalist called John Pilger. He's interviewed you a few times and I'm just wondering what he's done recently to help you out. Is he a great help? Has he done a lot? John Pilge is a great guy. I admire him a lot. He co founded my defence fund here together with a very good friend who's died a few Months ago, Gavin McFadden, effectively my father in the United Kingdom. He's a good guy. Pilger. Not appreciated nearly enough in Australia, but that's because Australia doesn't really exist. Pilger, okay. He's kind of, you know, a bit moralizing sometimes. That's a tough guy and a good guy. And he's. What's my interpretation on why he hasn't had a fair run in Australia? Because he's gone out and criticized the United States. He's like, that's primarily what he does, is criticize US Empire, occasionally some other empires like the ussr, occasionally British foreign policy. He's kind of embarrassing in that respect, in the same way that I'm embarrassing as a, you know, each state feels responsible for their citizens to other states. And I and Pilger are, you know, pain in the ass to influential people in those other states. The Australian state is kind of pathetically sucking up to all the time.
- [91:35]
Desh Amila
Just a quick one from Brisbane before we move on from Cyril Joyce. Did you meet with John Kerry in October 2016, and what was the substance of the conversation?
- [91:47]
Julian Assange
I didn't meet with John Kerry. It would be interesting to imagine in what world that would be possible. Maybe now, maybe now, I guess, looking for anything, but no. John Kerry met with the Ecuadorian government in Bogota when the peace accords between the FARC and the Colombian government were being negotiated. A lot of foreign dignitaries came in, including the Secretary General of the un, the then Secretary General, un. And my understanding, I'm confident in it, is that Kerry has said that there would be serious consequences to Ecuador if we kept publishing about Democratic Party. So absolute abuse of his position of Secretary of State to lean on Another government for party political purposes during election to squeeze a refugee in the territory of Ecuador to shut them up. But publications weren't interrupted for a single day.
- [93:07]
Desh Amila
Okay.
- [93:09]
Julian Assange
Hi there, Julian.
- [93:09]
Desh Amila
My name is Claire Riley.
- [93:11]
Julian Assange
I write for CNET.
- [93:12]
Desh Amila
You've talked about WikiLeaks MO to publish without censorship and without selectivity. But information doesn't stand in a vacuum and there's a lot to be said for timing.
- [93:22]
Julian Assange
So why has the push towards freedom.
- [93:24]
Desh Amila
Of information become so closely tied with.
- [93:27]
Julian Assange
Releasing documents for maximum impact? Well, sources don't give you stuff unless it's going to have impact. But if you look at it from our perspective, Look, I have always thought that the real value in WikiLeaks is it is a wonderful library that you can trust about how modern institutions actually behave. You can cite it, you can trust it. It's the original pristine information. Okay. We also have some of our analysis and indexing and displaying and so on. But the real value is it's this, you know, this rebel Library of Alexandria. But the library has to be marketed. And so the scandal generation business, which we're also in, I just view as a, as a kind of marketing effort for what is much more substantial, which is our archive. And that's what we do. But sources like that as well, they like you, you know, they, they go through risks and effort to get information and they don't want to think that it's in vain. They want people to read it. So we try and maximize the value of the information to readers. So that's publishing it at the moment when they most want to read it, when they most want to know what it contains. And that's definitely before an election rather than after election. And you can just imagine if we had suppressed what the Democratic Party was doing inside, what the secret speeches were of Hillary Clinton to big banks until after the election, by the way, that's the sort of thing New York Times does do. For example, it suppressed the reality of National Security Agency mass domestic interception of call records in the United States across the re election of George W. Bush.
- [95:45]
Desh Amila
One more question. Sorry guys.
- [95:48]
Julian Assange
Hello, Julian, my name is Mohsen. Well, my question is sort of a broad, I just want to get your view of a broad sort of sense of basically since the Trump's administration started and even before that there was a sort of a global concern about his political directions and more so lack of political directions in a lot of aspects that has global consequences, say in, in an Orwellian sense of capitalism versus communism or Russia versus us. And I just want to see how you see the future of these conflicts going and the countries especially that are sort of happen to be in the middle of the frontline of these conflicts, countries that are now being a part of the travel bans and the Muslim bans and so on. So I just want to know, how do you see the future of these relationships between US and Russia going and what impact does it have on a global scale? Okay, I think that's about an hour. The liberal. The liberal plus neoliberal plus intelligence agencies critique of the incoming Trump administration. By the way, I think most of that critique, be frank, I think most of that critique is rooted in class. That sure, he has a bunch of kind of oligarch type business people around him. Sure, I agree. But I think most of the critique actually is a class based critique. Some is a race based critique. And the professional classes feel threatened by someone who they perceive to be the leader of the white trash. And that's really unsettling. And so those people within Europe, which in general considers itself to be more cultivated and is horrified about this crass American phenomena, and those classes and interests who also feel threatened, they are now saying, as Der Spiegel did a week ago in its editorial, which was echoed by some members of the German government, that Germany can no longer look to the US for leadership. That's an incredible thing for Germany to be saying that if you understand the history of politics in Germany, it's an incredible thing. Similarly, the speaker of the House of Parliament here in the UK has said no, as far as he is concerned, President Donald Trump comes to the UK later this year, will not be speaking in Parliament, the American president not speaking in the British Parliament, and in Australia, Paul Keating coming out and saying, and more importantly, his words being echoed, that perhaps Australia needs its own independent foreign policy. So I think these are incredibly positive developments. It's possible that there's a reality to Pax Americana that has some positive elements. In some ways, it's the beginning of countries feeling that they are responsible for their own foreign policy in themselves. I don't want to overstate it because the ties between the intelligence agencies and the militaries in the Western countries are very strong and will persist after. It will persist through this Donald Trump phenomenon and what comes after. But at least at the rhetorical and political level, something very important is happening.
- [100:29]
Desh Amila
Okay, Julian Sarge.
- [100:41]
Coleman Hughes
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