RedHanded - ShortHand: Julian Assange

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

When Julian Assange created WikiLeaks in 2006, it was the aim of rooting out corruption and improving transparency. And its successes were unprecedented, exposing hard-kept, dirty secrets from the very highest levels of power.But somewhere along the way, something happened. And whether it was Assange’s ego that brought him down – or the institutions he had so royally pissed off – isn’t totally clear. H&S try to find the truth about the world’s most famous truth-teller.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Hello. Hello. And welcome to shorthand where order has been restored. We are back in our correct seats. Thank God for that. And guess anyone's wondering why we were swapped around. And probably in an episode that came out ages ago because... Or hasn't come out. Well, hasn't come out. Because we are in a jumble of when we're recording things and when we're releasing them because of all of the bloody reactive episodes we keep doing because we're crazy. It was just because Hannah's laptop wasn't charged. That was it. But we're back in the right places now, where we belong. And we've got a case. A companion, one might say. Yes. For a case is coming out this week on Main Feed, Red Handed.

Because we can't do what we want. For centuries. Politics has happened behind closed doors, with people like Machiavelli swishing his cape all over this. A government's secrets would consist of furtive conversations and reams of physical documents sealed in impenetrable vaults. The internet happened, and thank God it did, or we'd both be out of the job.

Yeah, quite. And with the dawn of the interwebs, the amount of information that could be stored and the likelihood of it spilling out significantly increased. And I know this has nothing to do with anything. Well, it does, but nothing to do with this particular case. Just much better fire safety now that we have the internet.

Very good point. Because officers just filled with reams and reams and reams and boxes and boxes and cupboards full of paper is one of the reasons that, other than the fact that, you know, two planes flew into those buildings. Like why 9-11 was like such an inferno? It's because the officers were just filled with paper. And paper likes to be satellite. It certainly does.

Please continue. And for some people, the dawn of the internet and the likelihood of spillage spelled opportunity. Today we've got the story of one organisation that sought to rewrite how states interact with their people. Forever. and one man who outsmarted, humiliated and exposed the most powerful institutions in the whole world. Here is the shorthand.

Julian Paul Hawkins was born on the 3rd of July 1971. Into a cult! Go listen to our episode on the family, which I have helpfully put in here a story we covered years back in episode X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, because I was going to go look up which episode number it was, and I forgot to do that. But yes, we'll get back to that. He was born in an even more fucking mental-sounding place than how the cult the family sounds. Because he was born in the definitely not made-up town of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Australia, this, I feel like, is just a flex on how big you are.

Yeah, they weren't trying. Townsville, run out of names, it's just called Townsville. And young Julian's parents were a visual artist and a builder who separated before he was even born. So when he was just a year old, Julian's mother married actor Brett Assange, and they started a travelling theatre troupe, like the people from the sound of music?

Is that what happens in the sound of music? No. I've never seen the sound of music. That's not what happens in the sound of music at all. Is it not even a side plot? No. Oh, well, boo. No, they escape the Nazis.

Oh, what am I thinking of? Who are the Von Traps? That's that sound of music. Are they not a travelling theatre troupe? No, no, she just teaches them songs. Okay, whatever. And then they're like, thank you for my blossoming personality. Let's not take this show on the road because they're a Nazis.

Oh, I see. No, they were never a troop. They're far too high class to be a traveling troupe. Never mind. So, Julian Assange, unlike the Bon Traps, was in a family of a traveling theater people. And this woman, his mother, stayed with actor Brett Assange until Julian was nine years old.

By which time Julian had decided that Assange was a much better name than Hawkins. And so he took it. And his mum actually went on to marry Leif Maynell, a member of the new age cult that we've already alluded to, The Family, which you don't need the episode number. Just go search Red Handed the Family and you'll find it and they are fucking none.

So anyway, Julian lived in more than 30 towns and cities across Australia before he left home, and this dad-swapping theatre troop following lifestyle had a dramatic effect on him. Still, he found solace and community in the nascent 1980s internet, and by his mid-teens, Julian was a pretty nifty hacker. And on the internet, Assange went by the name Mendax. from the Latin, splendid mendax, meaning noble liar. Kill me, shoot me in my head. What would be your hacker name?

What would my hacker name be? Mine's Susie Kewan on. Yeah, of course it is. Susie Kuan on. That's so good. That is a good one. I keep it forever. I love pandas. So in 1987, when Julian was just 16 years old,

the police turned up at its front door. They raided his house and took all. of his equipment. Asange stood accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Citibank. Now, nothing was proven, and all of his hacking equipment was soon returned. But

Julian was obviously competent enough to gain access to places he really shouldn't. And he'd learned a lesson in subtlety. In October 1989, days before the launch of a NASA space shuttle, a computer worm tore

through computers in one of the space agencies' networks. The screen showed only a simple text-based message. And it is just the word wank, but spelled out with forward and backslashes. It is quite funny. It is very funny. It says worms against nuclear killers in that typewriter font and then wank. Your system has been officially wanked.

You talk of times of peace for all and then prepare for war. It is funny. It's like when people make little like a teddy bag. bears, out backslashes, but he's just written the word wank. Now I'm getting all sorts of... Have you been wanked? I think I've been wanked. Oh no.

Hannah's been wanked. It's about time. Okay, I'm back in. Oh my God, we should be the red panda. That could be your... The red panda. That could be your hacket name. The red panda's been outwanked.

So when a NASA user logged on to their computer, a message said, someone is watching you. Vote anarchist. Exclamation mark. Activists had been campaigning against the space launch. They worried that if the spacecraft blew up, the plutonium on board could be devastating to the surrounding area. So, every newspaper, documentary and biography out there

will only say that Assange has been closely linked to the wanked attack, but it has never really been proven. But listen, it was him. And you can come for us if you really have to. Especially when I thought was quite funny. It's very funny and the message contains a lyric from Assange's favourite song and every time Wangt is brought up, he does smirk and say, what a successful little worm it was. And if it was him, which it was, Wanked was the very first iteration of Assange's so-called

hacktivism, trying out ways to use his skills to further his political beliefs, or rather to achieve his political ends, I would argue. And that's the thing, right, is that people will be like, like, and this is quite like generally speaking for activists, for vigilantes, for anybody. I'm like, oh, well, yeah, I liked it when he did that. I'm not saying we shouldn't have whistleblowers. I'm not making comment on that. I'm just saying some people will defend things that people do, activists do, hacktivists do,

vigilantes do as long as they're on the side. And then when they're like, oh, you shouldn't have done that. Now I disagree. It's like a fine line, guys. So Assange never quite finished a degree at university but in the early 90s he was studying programming, mathematics and physics at both the Central Queensland University and the University of Melbourne. By this point, according to him, he had already hacked thousands of systems, including the Pentagon.

While studying, Assange got into the slightly confusing early 90s Venn diagram of ravers and hackers, like Neo in the Matrix. And he made a bunch of techie friends in the Melbourne ravement. seen. Oh, that sounds horrible. I wonder what the connection is between tech nerd and tech raveh. It is a fit. Yeah, I mean, yes, it is. I don't know. I don't know. I honestly don't know. Maybe it's something to do with people who can like hyperfocus and really like black and green and listen to shit music. It's not for me. It's not for me. But I don't know. It makes sense. And during this time, Assange and two other young hackers known as tracks and

prime suspect, just let that hang there, started a collective that they called International Subversives. I would bet quite a lot of money that they didn't really have friends at school. Probably. And from the start, Assange was militant about his ethics. First and foremost was the belief that there was no place in the world for secrets, that all information should be shared. In 1991, international subversives gained access to a secret.

secret data network used by the US military called Milnet. They reportedly had access for more than two years and carried out frequent attacks. They attacked NASA, the Department of Defense, the Australian Federation Police, institution after institution that represented what they saw as the broken status quo. Eventually, a police investigation against international subversives called Operation Weather. It's not as good a name. bought them hacking into a telecommunications company and causing more than $160,000 of damage. Assange was arrested and charged with 31 counts of hacking

and other related crimes. But they couldn't deny his skills. And by 1993, he was actually working with the police's child exploitation unit to track down the distribution of CSAM, so child sexual abuse material. And that is a very common story. I don't think that law enforcement is able to automatically attract the kind of people that are like middle finger to the man, which also fits into that Venn diagram of ravers, hackers and middle finger to the manners.

So what they do is they catch them and then they're like, you can go to jail for 50 years or you can just come work for us. They're like, well, I guess I'll just work for you. That is their recruitment policy. Still, Assange was trying out ways to use his nows to make things. right. In December 2006, he wrote an essay entitled Conspiracy as Governance. In this essay, he describes political parties as wide-scale conspiracies whose only goal is to conserve power and explains the need for radical change. Assange says that only secretive or unjust organizations have anything to fear from leaks. And that creating a world where leaking is easy

makes organisations exquisitely vulnerable to more open systems of governance. I don't necessarily disagree with what has been said there, but it is a bit like when you're getting told off in the playground, you're like, well, if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about. And yes, some people will make the comparison to, like, when the government enforces rules on people to be like,

well, why do you need privacy? If you're not a terrorist, what if you've got to worry about? But the point is that it's not the little guy being oppressed by the fucking government, it's the government should be transparent to the public and to us. So it's about the power dynamics. But also, again, like, we can come on to, like, discuss this in more detail. It's hard to get away from in this episode being the main question that we're asking. But it's a fine line, right?

It's like, of course, I believe in this idealistic view that we should all know everything and the government should be held to account. Organization should be forced into transparency and whistleblower should be allowed to leak whatever information they need to if they think something is untoward. Is it dangerous? Is it ethical? I don't know. But does it matter? Is it more important that we have transparency? The libertarian to me is like, fuck the system. But I also understand it's not as easy as that. But when war crimes are being committed, which we'll go on to discover and talk about,

fuck yeah. I don't know. It's complicated. We also know that the government is super fucking corrupt and doing all sorts of horrible shit. So I can't bring myself to. to say anything other than, yes, full transparency. Yeah. So this essay also described the need for Assange's new media organisation, you know what I'm going to say, Wikileaks. Inspired by the Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks would be a base for exposing secrets.

Anyone could upload anonymously and untraceably to a dropbox. And I do have to say that is a good note. WikiLeaks is a good note. He's really thought about the branding there. So the world had changed. Between word processing and the internet, the sheer amount of classified information that could be stored by governments skyrocketed.

And the number of people with access to said documents grew as well. Because the government's need people to use, organize, and file all of that lovely, delicious, valuable information. And for the founders of WikiLeaks, All of that information was owed to citizens. Soon it claimed its first wins. WikiLeaks exposed the rotten tax-dodging dealings of Swiss Bank, Julius Barr. It also exposed government corruption that covered up a murder in Kenya,

and it published a scientific report which exposed the dumping of hundreds of tons of toxic waste into the sea near the Ivory Coast. At the time, 30,000 victims were used to be. suing the company responsible in London, but the damning report was protected by a super injunction. WikiLeaks took it upon itself to get the truth out. The organisation was growing, but it wanted more. Assange was travelling the world, speaking a hacker conventions.

He was directly encouraging anyone who had classified access or knew anyone who had classified access to leak whatever information they could to Wikileaks. In 2009, the website published its first most wanted leaks list. It included requests for all sorts of things, from the editorial guidelines for Fox News, to information on the inner workings of the Mormon Church. But among the entries were calls for information on US military practices,

dealings related to Iraq and Afghanistan, and to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and it wouldn't be long before their calls were answered. In April 2010, a 39-minute video was published on WikiLeaks, titled Collateral Murder. Yeah, this is horrendous, and this is exactly the kind of thing that makes everybody, including me, think yes. Yes to everything being out there all of the time because they're just lying to us. Yeah. This 39-minute video was taken by the onboard camera of an Apache helicopter gunship, flying through Eastern Bags.

dad. The crew opens fire on a group of ten Iraqi men, none of whom are doing anything suspicious, and two of whom turned out to be journalists working for Reuters. When a van arrives to pick up the bodies, the helicopter opens fire again. Inside the van was a father taking his two young children to school. And apart from how senseless the killings were, the other thing that really stands out in the video was the gleeful commentary. You'll hear quotes like, light them up, keep shooting, and oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.

And much more of that punctuates every gunshot. And the release of this video was the first time that WikiLeaks directly took on the US military. It wasn't very winning the hearts and mindsie, and the White House were furious. Probably more furious than they were when they found out about that video footage existing. Oh, yes, absolutely. And I really wish I'd written this person's name down, but there is a Irish comedian who did a live tour. And I want to say the live tour was called whistleblower.

I can't remember. I'm so sorry, someone will comment, I am sure. Somebody is commenting as you're listening to this about what this person's name is and what his tour was called. But in his tour, he basically the entire thing is about whistleblowing. And it's about Julian Assange. It's about all of this and how he is like, he is a modern day hero

and anybody who's saying the opposite is being willfully brainwashed by the government and what he does is actually when everybody comes in the first thing he plays is that video for them that helicopter footage and he's like now tell me that this shouldn't have surfaced right and he's like

might not sound like the natural start to a comedic set but it works and it's hard to argue with so in the forer that followed this video being released by WikiLeaks. A few government figures agreed that US citizens deserve to see these atrocities, but that other nations shouldn't. So they have to stay secret. So that's a very nice little roundabout way as to explaining why they're not making public. They're like, we understand why you

should see it, citizens, but we can't let other people see it. We can't let those other spying governments see us. So that's why we have to keep a bit of secrets for your own good. Not the outsiders. Exactly. The government's take words. was that any government has tactics that have to be secret to be successful. And by publishing them for the world to see, WikiLeaks had crossed a line. But rather than run and hide, Assange stayed as public as possible, speaking out. And since the source of the leak had to remain anonymous, Assange became the figurehead. And he became quite the celebrity.

Which he absolutely loves. Of course he does. He became the poster boy for change to thousands of people across the world who were fed up with the brazenness of institutional corruption and brutality. Assange represented a new idealism and most importantly, the impish way he ran rings around seemingly impenetrable and powerful institutions gave a lot of people hope. He's like the hacker from a movie, right?

He's crowdsourcing these leaks. He's calling for them, he's asking for them and people are delivering because they can see now that there is a place for their... them to upload whatever horrible shit their institution is up to. But it comes across like one man is doing it because all of the leakers are secret. And so, of course, it makes him seem like this omnipotent. Wizard man. Wizard man, exactly.

And his message was simple. Again, as I kind of said earlier, if you have nothing to hide, give us the truth. In October 2010, WikiLeaks gained access to almost 400,000 classified documents from the US military on its war with Iraq. And it did not look good for the US. These documents showed that the military had purposefully covered up information about civilian casualties and systemic torture. It showed criminal cover-ups by the US government and exposed a policy of using its diplomats to spy on other country's governments. It also showed that Obama himself had sanctioned a mass handover of the US's Iraqi prisoners of war to Iraqi authorities. Under the Geneva Convention, a state

can't hand a prisoner of war over to another authority that they know commits torture. And the document showed detailed knowledge of Iraq's brutal history of torture and murder of its prisoners. Let's, you know, put a very fine point on it. That's a war crime. Yeah. And it's proven that it happened. And I think this whole idea of like, well, we just can't tell you because it's top secret

information. It's like, well, if you're committing more crimes as one of the most powerful countries in the world, who is going to hold you to account? And that's why people could get behind WikiLeaks because it finally felt like somebody was doing something to hold truth to power. And again, it's very, very hard to argue with that. So Wikileaks had worked with a group of media collaborators on publishing its findings. But in that process, process cracks were already beginning to show. Assange was black and white in his ethics. All information is useful and should be published.

And if Iraqi civilians had given information to US forces and their lives would be threatened by publishing their names, that shouldn't stop them. So this is where you start to see Julian Assange's very black and white mentality, like I said on this. There's no nuance to him. There's no grey area. it's all or nothing.

And it's because he has the idealism of a zealot. I know that's not the right phrase, but that's how it feels. I mean, it's not that far off. He's so convinced about his own righteousness in this. So if that wasn't clear enough, Assange also said that if an Afghan civilian helps coalition forces, he deserves to die. But the journalists were a bit more nuanced.

They pushed for redactions to prevent any real world harm. But after weeks of debate, the unredacted version was still published on WikiLeaks. And on the day the stories broke, Assange, naturally, became one of the most talked about people on the planet. Stories in The Guardian and the New York Times exposed the truth of the US military. They showed that the real numbers of civilian casualties were way higher than reported. It was the most important story in the world for a few days. But very soon, the White House played a PR blinder, and they made a stink all of their own. They painted Assange as a traitor, saying that he had blood on his hands,

because in releasing such sensitive information illegally stolen from intelligence agencies, he was putting untold numbers of people in danger. And suddenly, the talking point around the world wasn't the USA's war crimes, of which there are many. It was the ethics of hacking sensitive information in the first place. It's very well played. It really is.

Yeah, I mean, twist, twist, twist, twist, twist. I'm not saying it's not a big question. In fact, this whole idea of the ethics of hacking sensitive information and then leaking it is, of course, hard to get away from. It's the core question at the heart of this story. Is committing war crimes bad?

Yes, of course. Is hiding it from your people a terrible, atrocious thing to do, of course it is. But the hacking and then publishing that information, is it safe, is it ethical, or is it even noble? Is the question that some people will have when they're thinking about Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, etc., etc. Can you force transparency on a government and should you?

Because leaks anywhere near this scale had never ever happened before. It was the kind of new question that spreads like, wildfire. And however you feel about it, there's no doubt that the size of that question, absolutely, very much intended by the White House, rushed a whole lot of US war crimes under the rug. And while everyone thought about whether, like we said, it's ethical to leak information, the US government started working out how to prosecute Assange as a spy. And he became known as a stone in the shoe of powerful nations, something I'm sure he also very much enjoyed. But it wouldn't last, because the same year, a warrant had been issued for his arrest on suspicion of rape and sexual assault.

Two women, Anna Arden and Sophia Willen, both accused Assange of rape. They both said that sex started consensually, but then he became aggressive and refused to wear protection. Anna said the following. Julian is definitely not a monster, but he crossed my boundaries and his conduct felt abusive. Assange fired back, at first saying he didn't know who these women even were, and tweeting that it was just a conspiracy to bring him down. And here was another gigantic question for the world's media to now debate, because wasn't it just a little too convenient that in the wake of history's biggest leak,

its figurehead was suddenly under fire, that the US's public enemy number one faced being called in by the police, allowing him to be extradited to the US to face espionage charges, well, commentators and online commenters naturally took these pretty reasonable questions a few shades further, saying that Ardenne had actually been a CIA plant. The evidence being a master's thesis she wrote about Cuba and her admiration for the former Argentine president, Nesta Kirchner.

So, I don't know, like obviously conspiracy theories abound, this is a stitch up to bring him down, that's what he says, these women are like, this is what he did. Look, like, many, things with Julian Assange, what this connects to in terms of like national security and whether the big question of should he have been leaking secretly obtained information feel like separate issues. He fled the arrest and WikiLeaks supporters around the world rallied to protest what they saw as drummed up lies to bring down a brave truth teller. So whatever the truth is, it's how people

perceived it. His supporters were like, this is a conspiracy to bring him down and the people that hated him were like, look at him, he's a piece of shit. For a while, Assange laid low, but after a week he turned himself into police in London and spent nine days in solitary confinement. But when WikiLeaks supporters raised hundreds of thousands of pounds in bail money, he was allowed out to stay under house arrest. Luckily for him, one of those supporters happened to be Vaughan Smith, an ex-journalist and owner of Ellingham Hall, a grand country estate in Norfolk.

Assange and the 15 other WikiLeaks staff moved in, and I bet they couldn't believe their luck. Smith's housekeeper cooked them all hot meals every night. Maybe that dry shepherd's pie from Blymanner is what I've got in my head. They drank port, shot game, and tapped away at their laptops protecting free speech. But soon, the lines between WikiLeaks and Julian Assangell. Sange started to blur. WikiLeaks was fundraising more than ever,

but it was unclear how much of the money was actually going to enable whistleblowers and how much was going to get used to clear Assange of sexual assault. And in a very untransparent move from him, Assange became quite paranoid. And he insisted that every Wikileaks member of staff sign an NDA.

And for a lot of people, understandably, That was the last hypocritical straw. An organisation dedicated to transparency using red tape to guard secrets was the kind of hypocrisy that not many people, myself included, can move past. And Assange's legal battle was really draining the piggy bank. After a year at Ellingham, WikiLeaks suspended operations. And Assange got an unexpected new address, the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Essentially, one day Assange turned up.

up at the Ecuadorian embassy, disguised as a motorcycle courier asking for asylum. Apparently he had met the president, Carrera, on a TV interview, and the two had really hit it off because Carrera was like, I'm constantly persecuted too. So when he turned up, they're asking for asylum. Carrera agreed and took Assange in. Now, the legality of what happened here when Assange was allowed to stay at the Ecuadorian embassy is a little bit shaky, because let's take a look at what the rules say. You're not. supposed to be able to arrest a citizen in another country's embassy, which is obviously why Assange has gone there because he's fleeing, being arrested. But after a shooting in the Libyan

embassy, the UK does now allow its police to arrest in other countries' embassies. It's also agreed, however, that if a country does allow you political asylum, it shouldn't be used to escape the courts. Quite tricky to enforce that one, I would imagine. Very tricky, especially if you're saying the first rule is that police can't go in there and arrest them. And the crucial point here is that Assange was definitely running from the courts, but he wasn't just running from the Swedes for those sexual assault charges. Because it was very unclear after that happened, whether he would just be extradited to the US

where he'd have to stand trial for being a spy. So that question very much hung in the air. And two met police officers were stationed pretty much permanently in front of the door of the Ecuadorian embassy, waiting to see if Assange ever. left and if he did, they were to arrest him. So he stayed. He stayed put in an apartment block in Kensington within that embassy

for almost seven years. With Assange tucked away, the powers that B did everything they could to try and dismantle WikiLeaks for once and for all. A US grand jury served subpoenas targeting WikiLeaks supporters. After political pressure, Visa and MasterCard stopped processing donations to the WikiLeaks website.

which is kind of illegal and pretty shitty, but they did it anyway. That's so shitty. Fuck me. And WikiLeaks has never really recovered from that. So whether you believe that Assange's paranoid cult of personality ruined the pure message of WikiLeaks, or whether you believe that governments didn't like Assange and managed to successfully silence him,

the sting was taken out of WikiLeaks' tale, but it did continue to do some important work. WikiLeaks revealed documents showing that the US had spied on three successive French presidents. Even the leader's personal phone calls were recorded by the USA. In 2013, WikiLeaks helped protect whistleblower, of course, Edward Snowden, after he leaked NSA documents to journalists, which showed the extent of the government spying on its own people. And in the meantime, Assange rattled around in the Ecuadorian embassy.

who was visited by celebrity fans, including Vivian Westwood, Lady Gaga, and Pamela Anderson, who was apparently a regular. I remember reading that and thinking, what the fuck is going on? And according to Pamela Anderson's very own book, on her and Julian Assange's first meeting, they shared a bottle of mescal and had a, quote, slightly frisky, fun, alcohol-induced night together. So let that stay in your brain.

No, thank you. It's there. It's like the wankworm. It lives in your brain now. But it wasn't all good times because soon Assange's internet access was cut for continuing to meddle in other states' affairs. And it wasn't just politics

because there was some domestic problem, shall we say. Staff at the Ecuadorian embassy were getting pretty fucked off with their house guest. They complained of Julian Assange, an adult man, skateboarding around the halls at night, walking around in his underwear and playing loud music in his room.

Apparently that room also stank. No. He'd go weeks without showers. He looks the sort. He looks like a smelly man. And apparently the smell absolutely filled the office. Assange also had a pet cat called James, who he wouldn't clean up after.

And he'd regularly accuse embassy staff of being US spies and gathering information. And allegedly a few times, in protest at his living conditions, and I have to say this is allegedly Julian Assange smeared his own shit on the walls of the embassy. I mean it sounds like you're causing the problem, Julian. Yeah, I have no words.

By 2017, all of Assange's sexual assault allegations had been dropped because the evidence was not strong enough to form the basis for filing an indictment and the Obama administration concluded that it would not be able to prosecute him without also pursuing the newspapers that had published the leaks.

In March 2019, WikiLeaks published information suggesting the new Ecuadorian president's brother had been using offshore accounts. That's how they get you every single time. Would you do that while staying in his brother's house? That's a mistake. And so, finally, after spending an estimated $1 million a year protecting Julian Assange, Ecuador booted him out, and I am not surprised. And so. He was taken into British custody.

Julian Assange now resides in HMP Belmash, fighting extradition. And if you know anything about this story, you'll know that we are barely scratching the surface. There is so much to unpick and plenty of complicated legal wrangling going on. We haven't even mentioned Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who leaked both the collateral murder video and the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs. Manning, Edward Snowden and the other whistleblowers that source this information are the ones taking immense personal risk

which for Manning included narrowly avoiding a death sentence. So maybe we'll come back to those stories another time. But what the story of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange does bring up are a lot of new questions about information and politics in the digital age. But maybe the main takeaway from it all is you don't fuck with the US government. I promised nothing.

I mean, look, with the whole Julian Assange thing, is he a dick? Yeah. Do I agree with what he's saying about transparency and holding truth to power? Also, yeah. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Yeah. And I think that Julian Assange is the perfect example. Exactly.

You know, I think it corrupted him. But also this idea that, well, he didn't leak everything. He leaked stuff for his own political gains, like with the Hillings. Hillary Clinton stuff we talked about in the episode that is coming out later this week. Go listen to it. It's on Seth Rich. Yes, but also all media establishments also do the same thing. To pretend that different media establishments, when they get a story, don't then push it through their own lens of bias and then leave out information that makes you maybe think differently than they want you to and include information that really hammers home their point is also

being disingenuous. So yes, absolutely people will say, well, Julian is, Sange wasn't just publishing everything. He was holding back stuff. He only published stuff about Hillary Clinton that made her look bad because he wanted her to lose. I'm not saying that's right. I'm saying all media outlets do exactly the same thing. Yes, I agree. You can read one article about the same story in multiple places and get various different

information. And I think he is just as guilty of that as everyone else. But the core message at the heart of WikiLeaks is one that I can certainly get behind. That's about all I have left to say. Anything else, Red Panda? This is Red Panda signing off on the longest shorthand. I know, let's go. Right, bye everyone.

Red Panda out.