Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/9/22 Misty Winston on the Global Push to Free Assange and How You Can Help

Episode Date: December 11, 2022

Scott interviews activist and podcast host Misty Winston about the persecution of Julian Assange and those who are working to stop it. Winston first gives an update on what Assange is facing right now. They then talk about the letter from major publications like the Guardian and the New York Times calling for Assange’s release as well as Elon Musk’s popular Twitter poll. Scott and Winston find these developments hopeful and frustrating because of how long Assange has been maligned in the media while living under some form of custody. Lastly, Winston reviews the global network of activists campaigning for Assange and lays out how you can get involved in the effort.  Discussed on the show: Action4Assange Denver Action to Free Assange Assange Defense Boston Oklahoma4Assange Action4Assange Seattle Scott’s interview with John Young of Cryptome Winston’s “Monster” Thread Misty Winston is co-host of Facts on the Ground and Action 4 Assange. She also hosts her own show The Misty Winston Show. Follow her on Twitter @SarcasmStardust This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show okay you guys on the line i've got misty winston from action for asanj dot com use the digit for there action for asanj dot com and uh she's comrade misty putton's buddy on twitter

my Twitter friend welcome back to the show how are you doing I'm doing really good thanks for having me I appreciate it uh hell yeah so uh happy to have you here of course tell us um first of all the latest news on what's going on in the case of Julian Assange I know uh to start us off here that he is awaiting appeal to the very highest authority in the UK now his very last appeal after it got kicked back down and worked back up again down up and down the chain of the courts there this is the last one before it goes to the european commission of some other damn thing i don't know um but he's still locked up in prison i think he's not in solitary but he's still in prison um in belmarsh prison in the u k and then that's all i know so now

catch us up to date on the latest well a lot has been going on this week it's been a very busy week in the world of assange um uh so as you mentioned he is currently waiting for the request to appeal. They put in what's called perfected grounds for appeal a couple of months ago. It's been a while. And basically, as you said, it's just like a Hail Mary pass. It's like, hey, are you really sure you don't want to hear our appeal? So that is almost certainly going to get denied. It's already been denied. The appeal has already been denied at one point. As you said, it's been kicked down and then back up the court, the little chain of command there. So there are a couple of other legal options in the UK. As you said, the European Court of Human

Rights is a possibility. But he's really kind of running. out of legal options here. So Christian Harofsnan, who is the current editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, has said that there's a very good chance that Julian Assange could be extradited to the United States within weeks. So that is where the court case currently stands. But this week has been very busy. On Monday, five international newspapers came out in support of Julian Assange. They published an open letter of appeal to the United States to drop the charges against him. So the New York Times, the Guardian, Dershbeagle, El Pais, and LeMond, who were the five publishing partners of CableGate, which Monday was also the 12-year anniversary of CableGate. So that is kind of why they decided to come out with this letter at this time.

So that was something that, obviously, that kind of support is welcome. It's also very frustrating because in particular, the Guardian, but also the New York Times, they have had a very heavy hand in kind of assassinating Julian Assange's character over the past day. decade. They have been throwing him under the bus, publishing false stories about him, all of that good stuff. So while it's good that they're, you know, finally coming out and support 12 years too late, it is also very frustrating to see them do that. And then we've also had, as many people who are on Twitter, probably saw Elon Musk, who has been incredibly silent about what's going on with Julian Assange. You know, he's such a free speech warrior. But even in putting out his poll, he said he's not expressing an opinion. He just wants to know everybody

thinks about it, um, which again, very frustrating, but it's cool that Elon Musk put out this poll, um, which got like 3.3 million votes or something, uh, 80% over 80% in support of pardoning Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Um, uh, it's troubling to me that he phrased it in that way, because in my personal opinion, a pardon isn't needed. The charges should just be dropped. Um, uh, but, you know, that's up for argument. A lot of people think that a pardon would be good because it prevents them from coming back with charges later. Um, but that's, you know, up to just, you know, personal opinion. So that was also very cool to see.

But yeah, there's a bunch of events happening tomorrow. Tomorrow's International, the International Day for Human Rights. So you can expect a bunch of tweets from a bunch of war criminals about how human rights are so important, which is always fun. But there are global events taking place. And by tomorrow, you mean Saturday the 10th. Yes, Saturday the 10th. You know, the thing of it is, too, is we're talking about all of this in the year 2022,

which is 12 years after the big league and even eight years after the, you know, pretty big leak with the, you know, election in 2016 and all of that. And so I think there's probably a lot of people who know some about one aspect but not the other and vice versa. And then also people who really don't know much at all about WikiLeaks and I don't know, some guy post leaks. Yeah. And maybe don't even know what's so important about it all.

So what is so important about it all? Well, and you're absolutely right. I think that's one of the biggest problems that I have in, you know, kind of advocating for Assange is that a lot of people think that he's in prison for the 2016, the 2016 stuff. And that's just not the case. He's in prison currently for the releases of 2010, the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, the collateral murder video, the Guantanamophiles, all of that stuff, which were the leaks that were given to WikiLeaks through Chelsea Manning.

So, yeah, there's a lot of, and there's a lot of people, a whole lot of people who don't know who Assange is, have never heard of them, or if they have heard of them, it's like in passing and they are like, oh, yeah, is he that leaks guy or whatever, but they have no idea what's happening to him, or more importantly, how what's happening to him affects everybody. And that's, that's what makes this case so crucial is that, you know, if you care about anything, it doesn't matter what you care about. If your issue is environmentalism, education, if you're anti-war, whatever, it doesn't matter, you cannot effectively fight for the thing that you care about if you do not have the ability to speak, if you do not have the ability to publish truthful information. And so what's happening to Assange impacts everything else that we're fighting for. And he is a journalist, and he will be the first and only journalist who will ever be charged under the Espionage Act, which sets obviously a very dangerous precedent moving forward. This essentially gives the United States global jurisdiction over information in journalism, which is pretty terrifying. That's a pretty terrifying concept. So, yeah, this is,

I mean, this is one that in my opinion, and I realize I'm biased because this is what I do, but in my opinion, we can't afford to lose this one. This is a big one. And this really does, I mean, I know you're big on Yemen. You can't fight for Yemen if you cannot put the truth out there. If you can't educate people, if you can't have conversations, if you can't inform yourself and others about those causes, you cannot effectively fight for those things. And that's, I mean, this really is a turning point, in my opinion, in human history. We're going to go one of two ways here. And it's not looking good right now, unfortunately.

Yeah. Look, I think that's totally right. And the simple distinction that people got to understand, Assange is the leak E, not the leaker. They make up this stuff about hacking this and that. That's a bunch of disproving crap. Everybody knows that. None of that is right. All he did was say, yeah, you want to give me those files.

And he took those files, and you just listed them earlier, the newspapers who published stories based on all the files that he handed them. So when they put that on the front page of the New York Times and any of the rest of these, they're not doing anything qualitatively different than him when he just posts the document without a paragraph analyzing it at the top. He's just saying, here's the document. But that's not in any reasonable or articulatable way different. then a newspaper reporter telling you all the important stuff in this document that they got, which is what, you know, they say the New York Times test, but we know that Charlie Savage will always be allowed to print whatever lies, the CIA leaks to him, no matter what their level of classification. But what about, you know, Seymour Hirsch publishing about the Maillai Massacre,

and I forgot the name of it, but it was not the New York Times. It was some small left-wing, you know, circular that went around or whatever, where that. story got broken and a million of them since a million important stories that are done by what they would consider um you know alternative media or marginal media compared to the giants and if they can do this to asange it's not that they can do it to the new york times it's that they're going to do it to everybody but the new york times yes and you'll just and that's such a good point that is such a great point because you're right the new york times is uh they're able to print propaganda on a regular basis with no consequences whatsoever.

How many wars have they lied us into? And we know that they lied. Like, it's not up for debate anymore. We know that they lied. Yeah, all of them. But that's never, that will go without consequence. And that's what's so frustrating about what's happening to Julian is that he's never printed anything false, ever, not one time. Wikileaks has never had to retract a single word in over 16 years of existence, millions of documents published. And they've never had to retract a single one. So in a time where everybody's clutching their pearls over misinformation and fake news, it's weird to me that there's not more support for the one guy on earth, literally, the only guy. And it's not just him. Wikileaks is, you know, they have a staff and all of that

stuff. But he is kind of the figure ahead. He's the fall guy here. So he's the one guy on Earth who we know for sure has never published a single word of misinformation. And what WikiLeaks offers us is so valuable, in my opinion, because it makes journalism as much as a science. And I mean real science here, not Fauci science. It makes it as much of a science as humanly possible. Like you said, it's not conjecture. There's no opinion. It's not a bunch of talking heads screaming at each other. What WikiLeaks offers you is 100% verifiable, authenticated source documentation. It is just the facts in black and white. Here's the truth. You read it. You decide what it means. And to me, that's such a valuable service to humanity to be able to peel back the curtain and look behind

the walls and see what's really happening, you know, in the Iraq war, to see what's happening at the DNC and the corruption that's involved in the election process or any of the other, you know, number of things that WikiLeaks is published about. And I think that that is such a valuable thing. And most people have no idea that that's what they do. That's what they've always done. And, you know, it's just, it's a very frustrating thing that people, especially people who, you know, really get hyped up about, you know, especially right now, there's all this stuff about real journalism, you know, like Rick and Grenell is running around talking about how real journalists need to be, you know, worried about what's going on at Twitter. Rick Grinnell had a huge hand in getting

Julian Assange arrested. So the hypocrisy is astounding. And it comes from both sides. And it's really, it's just a really weird time to live in where the truth just really doesn't matter. And people are fine with being propagandized. And, you know, people, we don't support our truth tellers in any way. Yeah, it is crazy. And, you know, there was a. time where, especially the left, but even liberals too, were kind of the champions of Assange and Manning after the first league. Although the leak came in 2010, so it included some stuff about Obama and Hillary in there, which kind of soured it. But it was, you know, mostly about, it was the Iraq and Afghan warlocks came first, and then the State Department cables. And so,

originally it was Bush that was implicated the most. And it was terrible. The stuff that was revealed in there about how they lied about how many people they knew they had killed and all of these things and war crimes that they had covered up that they admit to in the documents. Anyway, don't get me started on that. No, I know. And the Afghan war logs. And then, but so, then you have this partisan thing where, you know, the right wingers, you know, certainly didn't like them and didn't champion them, regardless of how heroic their journalism

was at the time. And then you have the whole transgendered sort of. thing with Chelsea Manning, which makes it all, you know, extremely culture war political in all the wrong way. So now we're not talking about leaks anymore. Now we're off on all this woke stuff back and forth. And then you have the interference, as they called it, the journalism that was published in the summer of 2016, the leaks from the DNC and Podesta, who was the chair of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, and Craig Murray, who's a friend of Julian Assange, told me on this show that he met the source, two different sources, for both leaks. And they were both Americans and neither of them had the slightest thing to do with Russia. He made it clear that the, I think he made it pretty clear that the one who leaked, the Podesta emails, was from the NSA. And they had a grudge because they knew they would go to prison. if they did what Hillary did, and yet somehow she gets away with it. This kind of thing

was the motive there, which is a totally separate person from this other person, neither of whom were, and I just, whatever, I believe Craig Murray on this. And I know that even in the Mueller report, they did not even pretend. They said right there, look, we don't have a chain of custody to WikiLeaks here. We're not even going to claim that we did because you'll make fun of us, so forget it. And then, well, I mean, Ray McGovern and Bill Benny run the group's Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and they did, like, an evaluation of the information, and I'm not a tech person, so I'm not going to pretend to, like, know all of the intricacies of what that is. But in their evaluation, they said that there's absolutely no way that this could have come from Russia.

It was a thumb drive download. It did not come from Russia. It would have, like, the download speed would have been so much slower. So this thing has been disproven time and time again, but you're right. It is this part. Wait, wait, one more thing on that. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just real quick. Jeffrey Carr, who is, very high level security expert came on this show in July of 2016. And he goes, listen, nobody can tell you who hacked that thing. You can't examine a server and say, I can tell you who did it because it's too easy to fake it, period. That's it. And in a discussion, he said there's one outfit in the world who can tell you exactly who did it if it went over the internet at all. And that's the national security agency. And they can tell you with 100% complete

assurance and confidence who did it if they have it, because they can even rewind the whole internet and watch the past and see what happened, which packet went where at any time. They have total omniscient, but authority over it all, view of it all, but no one else does. But so then that means that when reality winner leaked that document and it showed that the NSA only had medium confidence in this because they're just going along with their friends at the FBI and CIA on this one, then you know right there. that they did not document that, yes, the Russians hacked this server, and that's the daughter that didn't bark right there. That's all you need to know right there, really. Yeah. And I mean, we know from Vault 7, which was released in March of 2017 through WikiLeaks, which, by the way, incredibly courageous of Julian Assange, who was at that point already years into illegal and arbitrary detention in the Ecuadorian embassy. And then he went ahead and released the largest CIA leak in history. And in Vault 7, it shows that the United States has the capability to hack into systems and then leave footprints that make it look.

like it's somebody else. So you're right. There's no way that anybody can really, with any authority, say that they know for sure. I mean, you can say, like with what VIPS did, you can say that, you know, it couldn't have been, nobody from Russia could have done it. The download speeds would have been too long. It had to have been like a local download or a thumb drive download. So you can do that kind of stuff. But yeah, the NSA could do it, but they won't. And that's why they never, they always equivocate on this stuff. And they always say that they're, you know, They're pretty sure. They're pretty sure. They'll never say that they have full certainty of what's going on there because they just don't have any way of knowing. Yep. So there you go on that. And then I'm sorry, do you remember your train of thought when I interrupted you on that technical point there about that?

Oh, yeah, I was just going to, I was just going to touch on the kind of partisan tribalism kind of thing. It's really unfortunate. You know, when it, when the 2010 releases came out, you know, Democrats and liberals love Julian Assange. She did a TED talk and got a standing ovation in a room full of liberal. liberals, right? And, you know, and Republicans and conservatives hated him. And then the 2016 leaks come out and all of a sudden liberals hate Julian Assange and conservatives love him. And Donald Trump's saying, I love the WikiLeaks. You know what I mean? And it's really depressing to me that there's no consistency of principle because I stand for free speech and for truth. And no matter what, I don't care whose team it impacts or whose team it helps. It doesn't matter. And there is none of that in our political landscape right now. And, you know, Julian Assange is an unfortunate victim of that. It's, you know, it's really, it's sad to

watch people kind of just completely throw their principles under the bus because their team is impacted one way or the other. Yeah, seriously. Hey, you all, it's fun raising time again at the Libertarian Institute. We try not to do this to you too often, but business is business after all. I got a great group of guys and a gal at the Institute, and I got to pay them. So just go to Libertarian Institute.org slash donate to pick your price and help out. We've got some great kickbacks, too, books and shirts. Great ones. That's Libertarian Institute.org slash donate.

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excitement and a little bit of hatred proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses see the roses only in theaters August 29th get tickets now and you know like Greenwald as a typical I think liberal I don't think he's really that far to the left

he just doesn't fit in with what liberals are now but his idea was like and this is just basic kind of journalism principle 101 from not too old days is that like hey let the truth come out let the people decide it's not the reporter's job to pick and choose i mean you can pick and choose what

you're interested in covering that's something but like hey if you got a scoop publish it man yeah and um and even regardless of the source you know somebody turns over dirt on their political enemy but you can verify it run that thing man yeah that's what journalists are supposed to do if you get information that is verifiable and it's in the public interest you publish it period End of story. And in fact, like Hillary at first said, look, it was the racist and it was James Comey who reannounced the investigation into her private email server that cost her the election. And then, you know, Russians was kind of third and then they stuck with that. Yeah.

Well, she had like a little wheel that she would spin on a daily basis of who am I going to blame today? Is it Julian Assange? Is it Susan Sarandon? Is it Jill Stein? Is it, you know, she just had like a little wheel of. People that she could blame. And she's still, still to this day, is trying to blame everybody but herself, you know. And in fact, part of that thing, part of the accusation that this was the Russians would see the Russians hit back when the, what you'd call, Access Hollywood tape of Trump was leaked.

And he was in such trouble. But then you have this Italian journalist whose name, I bet you know, off the top of your head who I forgot. Stefanya Maruti? Uh, hang on, I had it here. Perhaps. Yeah, yeah. Maroozy, that's it. Yeah, she's great. Yeah, yeah. She said, n-uh. I was the one who put that out because I was finished. Yeah. Getting it prepared and

that's it. So don't give me that. Had nothing to do with that. It was just a coincidence. Yeah. But they'll spend that stuff however they can to avoid accountability and to save face. And I mean, it's hugely embarrassing that Hillary Clinton lost to a game show host that she hand-selected. She hand-selected him as her opponent and got her minions in the media to give him coverage to make him look legitimate. And then he trounced her. And that's embarrassing for her. And so, yeah, she's got to blame everybody but herself. Yep. And right. And that was in the WikiLeaks from the Podesta emails, the Pied Piper strategy. Yeah, thank you, Julian. Yep. People say, why is CNN showing an hour of Trump's empty podium before he even gets there?

Now we know why. Yeah, Bernie Sanders is giving a speech in front of thousands of people right now. Yeah. 2,000 people turn out. They won't cover that, but they'll cover Trump's empty. Well, that's why, because Hillary was cheating. but everybody knows cheaters never win. Yeah. The whole thing blew up in her face. Well, and that's why I think the media, too, doesn't give the Assange case as much coverage. There are many reasons why they don't. I think he embarrasses them because he is what they should be.

But also in the 2016 releases, it showed that many people, many members of the media, like Rachel Maddowls, like people high level in the media, were attending, like, off-the-record parties with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Glenn Thrush famously sent an article to the Hillary Clinton campaign for approval before he published it. And in the email, he said, look, I realize this makes me a hack. But if you guys want to read through this and send me any changes that you want and made, just let me know. And it's like they know. He knew that that made him a hack. But that's the relationship that exists in our political landscape.

The mainstream media and our government, they're all owned and operated by the same people, right? like the media, the politicians, they're all owned and operated by the same people. Yep. And it's just, and look, there, it's been a while since I caught up on this, but you can find out there maps of the interlocking boards of directors. There's just these giant multinational corporations that a lot of times tied with the arms industry and that kind of thing. Yep. Yep. 100%. And, yeah, and it's, you know, they'll do everything they can and consolidate. And since it's, especially in TV, it's such a heavily regulated industry, have all this government protectionism. I always like to quote this great quote from Dan Rather, from a

documentary called Buying the War that was done on PBS by Bill Moyers. And Rather says, look, when you work at these multinational corporations like CBS, these companies have huge regulatory needs in Washington, D.C., legislative needs, regulatory needs. And when you work for them, you don't need a memo to tell you that. Right. And what he's saying is essentially he's saying you can't cross the national government really at all in any serious way. No.

Well, there's the famous Noem Chomsky interview that he's doing with some journalists. I don't remember the guy's name. But the journalist is like, what do you mean? Are you saying that I don't actually believe the things that I'm reporting on? And Noam Chomsky said, no, I think you absolutely believe it. I just know that you wouldn't have that job if you didn't. You know what I mean? Like if you don't go along, you get pushed.

out. It's a great filtering system. If you actually challenge authority or if you report on things that they don't want you to report on, then you, I mean, look at what happened to somebody like Chris Hedges. He reported honestly about the Iraq war and he was fired from the New York Times. And that's, that's what happens all over, all over the place. That's, I mean, that is the state of our media. It's very, they don't have to, you don't have to, uh, come to you and say it directly. You just know, you know that there's certain things you don't touch that are third rail issues and you just go with the flow or you lose your job. Yep. And which by the way, He did have a job writing about how Saddam was in alliance with Osama for a while before he changed his tune there.

Yeah. And then that was what got in fire when he changed his tune. But, man, some of those stories from 01 and 02 are really bad there. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. Chris Hedges. Anyway.

Listen, so I'm so glad that you're doing this. I mean, hell, imagine if this happened to any of us. You get locked up for publishing a secret that got leaked? to you in the United States or at the hands of the United States of America. And look, he's not American citizen, but if he's under the prosecution, under the control of the U.S. government, that makes him a U.S. person. And that means that the Bill of Rights applies to him. Well, that's what's another very frustrating thing about this case is the U.S. very much wants to have its cake and eat it too here. Like you said, he's not an American. He's never

lived in America. WikiLeaks is not an American publication. And yet they think that they have the power and authority to prosecute him under the U.S. Espionage Act, which is crazy. It's crazy to me that, I mean, the journalists around the globe should be terrified about what's happening here. And, you know, the fact that this has been able to go on for as long as it has is really disheartening. It's really depressing that this is something that's gone on for this long. He's been just yet, I think it was yesterday was the 12 year anniversary of his actual initial arrest. And he's been in some form of incarceration or detainment. ever since then. That's 12 years of this man's life that he has given up simply just for publishing, again, just publishing the truth. They have a 100% record of accuracy. So that's a really scary thing. And the idea that the United States is able to go after an Australian citizen through the UK is crazy. All right. So tell us about the activist community involved in trying to keep the pressure up on this. Because I know you've got a lot of friends and allies who people listening.

can themselves ally with and hopefully get some multiplier effect going on here. Yeah, for sure. So if you're in the States, there are a lot of groups all over the country. As I mentioned earlier, there's a group in Denver. My friend Kendra runs that group. There's a group in Boston. My friend Paula. Wait, wait.

What are they called? So I think Denver is Denver free Assange. Boston is Assange Defense Boston. Tulsa, I don't think Tulsa has like an official name. I think it's maybe Tulsa for Assange. or something like that. But it's just like these small kind of pocket groups throughout the country. There's a D.C. group that just recently was formed.

They do a lot of work at like going to Merrick Garland's house. They hold regular vigils directly outside of his actual personal residence, which is great. So there's a D.C. group. There's a Seattle group. And if you just search on like Twitter or whatever, Assange, Seattle, I'm sure that it'll come up. But yeah, there's groups happening that are popping up. The support has been growing. I mean, over the past, so he was arrested April 11th of 2019. And over, since then, I've witnessed the support growing just exponentially. It's crazy how fast it's happening. And it's, I mean, it's, at the same time, it's too slow. He is in poor health. He had a mini-stroke, not this past October, but the October before. He, you know, supposedly got COVID. And he's been subjected to psychological torture for over a decade. So he's not doing well. Um, and obviously. And so, um, I mean,

we need this to happen much quicker, uh, but it is very cool to watch things grow. Um, and the activist community is really, I mean, it's so global. The London, I cannot say enough good things about the people in London. Um, they are absolutely, they're out there like twice a week, every single week, rain, shines, snow. COVID didn't matter. I mean, they would go outside and pretend to exercise when they were on lockdown so that they could, uh, keep up their regular vigils. They are absolutely just the most amazing, most passionate activists that I have the pleasure of knowing. And they're great people. There's people in Australia. There's, and who have been done, they've been doing a lot of work on getting a lot of MPs to sign

on to a bipartisan group to pressure the now Albanese government to kind of do more for Assange. You know, it's their citizen. And unfortunately, they really don't do much in terms of fighting for him. Um, so yeah, there's activist groups all over the place. There's constant efforts being made, whether it's on the ground or online. It doesn't matter. There's always, um, people trying to do something, raise awareness about it, um, which is really cool. It's really, it's really been, um, uh, you know, when things are bad, I'm always like, yeah, but look, look at how much the support has grown. And we really have come a long way. So, uh, and I mean, if you just look at the Elon Musk pole, I was shocked. Honestly, I thought, oh, here come the trolls. The anti-asant trolls are going to take

this pull over. It's going to, it's going to, we'll probably, we'll probably, probably win it, but it'll be close. And it was over 80% support. So I was really, that was really, I mean, obviously not a scientific poll and was worded very poorly and made the mistake of putting Assange and Snowden together in the same pole and they should have been separate. But, you know, I'll take it. I'll definitely take it. The support is growing for sure. That's great. All right. Now, I interviewed John Young from Cryptome last week. and if people go to Cryptome.org, he has a file. You can download the entire collection of the State Department documents, unredacted.

Yep. There. But WikiLeaks itself has been undergoing a lot of problems lately. I don't know if you realize that, but even the all-important, NET means NET memo is now a 404 error. And I wonder, does anybody know who's actually running that site right now? I asked them on Twitter like, hey, what's going on with the site? Can we help you in any way? Is it any kind of thing?

They're still tweeting. So there's somebody home, but I don't want to be too paranoid about it. I know that computer systems break down over time and whatever, but it seems like they don't have somebody there to fix it or I don't know what's going on. Nobody knows what's going on. And frankly, it's really disturbing that they haven't addressed it publicly. We've been talking about it since it started happening. We've been asking questions.

Nobody has really addressed it. Some people have addressed it who don't, I mean, it's just like random Twitter. people will be like, oh, yeah, but they said this happened. I'm like, but who are you? Like, are you an official with WikiLeaks? How do you know? Like, what, who told you? Um, so, yeah, I don't want to be too conspiratorial either, but it is disturbing to see, uh, you know, the receipts disappearing in real time. I mean, that needs to be addressed publicly. So hopefully, um, somebody at WikiLeaks will address that issue and, and, you know, make it clear what's going on. Obviously, um, if it's something, you know, that they, they're under attack. I mean, all the time. There's no question about it.

all of the money, time, and resources that they get or that they have is a lot of that is spent trying to save Julian's life. So if there's a good explanation for it, then just let us know. Like, we need to know what's going on and we need to know that those documents are secure and they're not just going to get wiped out because, I mean, that is a historical record and that needs to be protected. So, yeah, I don't know. Nobody has really addressed it of any official capacity that I'm aware of and I really hope that they do soon. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, I'll let you go and hopefully have a good rest of your afternoon there, Misty, but I really appreciate your time on the show and all your dedication to this all important issue here. Yeah, thank you.

Just really quickly, because of the New York Times, The Guardian, all those people, so I did like a monster thread of local newspapers in the United States. Oh, okay. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. This is a big, this is a big opportunity that we have here because we have five major international players coming out in support of Julian Assange. This gives us an opportunity where we can start reaching out to local newspapers and really starting to pressure them to add their names in support of Assange as well.

So if you go to my Twitter, it's the pen tweet on my Twitter. It's at Sarcasm, Stardust. It's the pen tweet. It's a monster thread. There's like three or four different contact links to different. In each state, there's three or four different contact pieces there. So you can go. And it doesn't have to be just those three or four.

I just pick the three or four like kind of top publications. but if you want to reach out to your own personal local, smaller publication, that's great, too. It doesn't matter. I just wanted to give people a jumping off point, but you can go, you can send them the actual letter of support from the Big Five newspapers. You can send them the article from the New York Times and just say, hey, look, you know, these big publications are now coming out in support of Julian Assange. It would be really cool if, you know, you would also add your name and support as well.

We've seen a couple of smaller newspapers. There was one in Pasadena that, like, the next day after the Big Five came out, They also published like a kind of a whole organization like, hey, we also want to lend our support to this as well. So if we can like kind of push that and get that ball rolling and start getting even more local newspapers involved, I think that that would be really good. And I might also break the seal on the kind of blackout, the media blackout that this case gets. It's very rarely covered even by mainstream media, but then also certainly not by, you know, more smaller local newspapers. and we need like that's what we need we need more coverage we need more people to just be aware as we said earlier a lot of people have no idea what's happening so that's one way that we can

kind of start to get that ball rolling and push that uh and push these you know publications to start doing their jobs really yeah you know it's funny i haven't written a letter to the editor in so long um yeah you know that kind of but i could see the point of writing it literally to them like hey guys you need to start covering this in a way and make it sort of of a first person conversation there with them. Yes. And if anybody is like not really sure how to go about writing that letter, my friend Paula, put together kind of a sample letter. It's got multiple different pieces, like points of information that you can include. You don't have to include them all. Letters to the editor generally need to be very concise. So just pick the, you know, a few that really

stand out to you and include them in your letter. We just wanted to make it as easy as possible. So that her sample letter is also included in that thread. We try to make it as easy as possible. Go just pick a couple each day. Shoot off. a letter to the editor and encourage them to add their name and support. Keller. All right. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, you guys. That is Misty Winston.

She's at Actionfor asanj.com. And again, that's the digit for there. And check out her, what the hell I just had it here? Her Twitter is at Sarcasm Stardust. Comrade Misty is Putin's buddy, it says. I think that must be an accusation she's mocking. And again, action for Assange, and I'm going to look up, see if there's anything going on in Austin. I'll try to drop by tomorrow.

The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.