Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/10/23 Gabriel Shipton on his Brother Julian Assange’s Fight for Freedom

Episode Date: March 12, 2023

Scott talks to Gabriel Shipton, the brother of Julian Assange, about the documentary he recently produced about his family’s fight for Assange’s freedom. Scott and Shipton discuss the film, what it portrays, who it features and why it’s called Ithaka. They then discuss some of the crimes Assange exposed, which would eventually land him in HMP Belmarsh as the world’s most famous political prisoner.  Discussed on the show: Ithaka (IMDb) Ithaka, a poem read by Sean Connery “Alternative Facts: How the media failed Julian Assange” (Harper’s Magazine) The Trial of Julian Assange by Nils Melzer Philip Weiss is the long-time editor of Mondoweiss.net. Follow him on Twitter @PhilWeiss. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. 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: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY 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 four you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube dot com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i've got julian assange's brother gabriel shippton welcome the show how are you doing yeah i'm great thanks for having me on i'm very happy

to have you here and listen last night i watched this new documentary that you guys are touring around the country screening. It's called Ithaca. And it's the story of your brother's imprisonment, but also especially your fathers and I guess your effort to get him sprung from the Belmarsh prison where he's in Britain right now, I guess awaiting a ruling on an appeal over an American extradition request. They want to prosecute your brother under the Espionage Act. So, I guess can we start with that? Where exactly are we in the process? Because the movie ends with a big win, but it wasn't a big enough one.

Yeah, so Julian is coming up to his fourth year in Belmarsh Maximum Security Prison just outside of London. That'll be four years on the 11th of April. He's there. He's not serving a sentence. He's not convicted. He's what they call a remand prisoner. There's two remand prisoners in that prison out of 800 prisoners.

20% of those 800 are convicted murderers. So that's just an idea of the sort of people that are in that prison. These are the most dangerous, most violent criminals in the UK. and Julian's been, you know, kept there amongst them as an innocent man. He has, so on June 17 last year, the Home Secretary, Pretty Patel signed off on his extradition order, and Julian has one more avenue of appeal in the UK High Courts.

And so he's submitted his application to appeal at the beginning of November and now he's waiting on the UK courts to decide whether they will hear the appeal or whether they will agree with the signed extradition order from Pretty Patel. So there could be a decision any moment now from the UK courts. So it's very these times for Julian when he has this sort of sword hanging over his neck of an impending extradition, they're very, tough very full of anxiety and um and uncertainty for him and for his family tell me gabriel is it is he still on so-called suicide precautions and uh 23 hour a day solitary lockdown and all that stuff

he spends most of the time in his cell um he does he does get exercise now uh you know he leaves his to get food as well. So the conditions have improved from when he was in the solitary confinement. And interestingly, and I think this is a sort of sign of how things change in Julian's case, it wasn't his lawyers, it wasn't pressure from government officials, It wasn't, you know, pressure from the UN that changed his conditions. It was three petitions done by the prisoners that led to Julian being moved out of that solitary confinement condition. So that's just a, that just sort of speaks so loudly to me that, you know, a change in Julian situation is going to come from the ground up and not from the top down.

that's interesting i never heard that it was the prisoners themselves said it's not fair the way you're singling out this guy and they did so in an organized enough fashion that that actually made a difference yeah that's right and so all the all the lawyers even the UN you know weren't weren't able to do it uh but the prisoners inside the prison all banding together uh were able to you know make you know pressure the prison to make the change that's really something else that's really great to hear too um okay i'm sorry this is a side point but i wanted to ask you why is the title ithaca well if you think so when john and i were on we're on the road or are on the road uh there's a lot of the times that you know things don't go our way

you know in that in the film or i guess one of those moments was you know after julian one at the magistrates court level and then you know a few days later had his bail rejected so that was a sort of very low moment for us and John would listen to this poem by a Greek Egyptian poet called Cavafy and the poem is called Ithaca there's a great reading on YouTube by Sean Connery and it's it explains or you know it's it's really about you know when you're fighting for something you know fighting for a cause that bigger than yourself or, you know, reaching for a goal that seems out of reach, just to remember

that, you know, it's even when you reach that goal, it's, and you find it and I think the line in the poem is if you arrive at Ithaca and you find her poor, you know, worry not because you arrive there rich with all the things you've learnt, all the places you've been and all the friends you've made along the way so at the low moments in the campaign it's important to remember that you know it's just about taking one step at a time and this movement is building around Julian and it's really that's why we chose that title because it's that sort of allegory for activism or when you're fighting for a cause bigger than yourself there's also a part of it that talks about fear and the

fears that you bring along inside you and to ignore those fears. And so I think that's very important in this, in this fight as well, considering who we're up against. Yeah, absolutely. I'm really glad I asked you that. And you're definitely right about, you know, silver linings here. It's not that it's worth it at his expense or anything, but new relationships and networks and activist groups and movements are being built up around this. We can see who the good guys are and who the bad guys are and who's willing to stick up for Assange and WikiLeaks. Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, what's a sort of unforeseen benefit that's come from Julian's persecution

is now there's a worldwide movement for democratic rights and freedom of expression and the First Amendment all around the world. You know, Julian once said that he wanted to export the First Amendment to the rest of the world. And I think through the fight to free him, we are seeing that happening. There's parliamentary groups or congressional groups, cross-party groups in every Western democracy now, all calling for Julian's freedom. And it's not just because of the violations of Julian's human rights, but what is at stake for everyone in these countries as well? They see this fight to free Julian as a fight for their own rights, a fight for their own press freedom and freedom of

expression. So, you know, as we travel around, we meet more and more people who are, you know, who have very concerned and join the movement. And, you know, I think that's a unforeseen benefit that's come to everybody through this fight to free Julian. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So in the movie, Nils Melzer, the UN special reporter or however you say that on torture, he makes an important statement in there. Well, he says lots of important things. But one of them is, this was never supposed to be about Julian Assange, not if he asked Julian Assange.

This is about the documents that he's posting online. This is about the journalism. This is about the outlet for whistleblowers to tell the truth about crimes that the governments they work for are committing. And so I want to give you a chance to talk about the Iraq and Afghanistan. and war logs, the State Department cables, the Guantanamo files, the DNC and Podesta leaks, and all the other stuff. I mean, Vault 7, but not just that. I mean, there are leaks on WikiLeaks.org from governments all over the world and including enemies of the war party, too, like Syria and

Russia, even though people always deny that and try to say that Assange, you know, is somehow an agent of these states that are enemies of the United States. That's a lot of the United States. not true. He's published all kinds of stuff about them too. But a lot of people maybe don't even know. I mean, his biggest hit was 10 years ago, right, or more, right? In 2010, 12, 13 years ago. And then, of course, 2016 was a big deal. So people maybe are more familiar with that. But go ahead and talk a little bit about WikiLeaks and about Assange's mission here, if you could, Gabriel. Well, you know, it sort of stems, you know, in the film we have a look at sort of how it really developed around the WikiLeaks,

the concept for WikiLeaks really developed around the Iraq war and the big lie around the Iraq war, the weapons of mass destruction that we all knew didn't exist, but we kept getting told by the prestige media and government officials that that's why Iraq had to be invaded. So Julian saw that problem that populations didn't like wars and they have to be convinced to, you know, endorse them or lied to, to convince these populations to, you know, not resist them.

And so Julian saw that problem and identified that, you know, this conspiracy between government and between prestige media to push these policies, these dangerous policies, that aren't actually good for populations. You know, the more money we're spending on the war machine, the less that goes, you know, to social causes or that people can keep in their pockets. And so it was around that that WikiLeaks was developed to disrupt those conspiracies

and take the decentralized that leaking, decentralize those leaks away from those leaks away from the prestige media and make them accessible to everybody. And by doing so, protecting leakers and increasing the impact of leaks, but also protecting journalists because journalists no longer had to protect their sources because WikiLeaks became the sort of outsourced or decentralized source protection. And that is why, you know, I think a good comparison that has been made is, you know, Chelsea Manning, the leaker of the Iraq war files, you know, the Afghanistan war logs, the torture at Guantanamo Bay, the famous collateral murder video that shows a helicopter gunship, gunning down two Reuters journalists, and then also gunning down the people who come to rescue them. That is why that, you know,

Chelsea Manning is free and had her sentence commuted in 2017, but Julian, you know, remains in prison. And I think that is quite a telling fact that, you know, what do these people fear most? And it is WikiLeaks and Julian and the system that he created to bring this information to the population that those empower fear the most. Yeah. All right. Now, so the movie mostly features your dad and also Julian Assange's wife, Stella Morris, and their effort traveling all around talking to parliaments, talking to private groups, talking to, I don't know, whoever they can, in order to try to get Assange freed. So first of all, can you tell us a little bit about Jonathan and tell us a little bit about Stella?

and then, you know, maybe a little bit more about the travels and travails here. Well, what we wanted to, you know, show any thicker is that, you know, John and Stella, they're just, you know, they're doing these amazing, courageous things. But, you know, at the end of the day, then they're normal people like you and I. They're, you know, John's a retired builder, Stella is a human rights lawyer, but also, you know, a wife and a mother. And they are normal people who do these extraordinary things. And so we wanted to show that in the film, show their personal journey and follow them as they fight to Free Julian in the hope that it can inspire more people to, you know, embark on these, you know, extraordinary journeys but you know we've we sort of in the film we follow them and Stella when we began filming Stella was still you know Julian's secret family she

hadn't come forward and and nobody knew that that she really existed other than a than one of Julian's legal team and it was during the filming and during the court proceedings that Judge Beretsa at the Magistrate's court refused to redact her name from court documents. And so Stella was forced to sort of take control of that and she came out and did interviews for 60 minutes and different programs and really took control of that and now has become one of Julian's greatest advocates and, you know, a sort of an activist and human rights defender in her own right.

So that was, you know, one of the really sort of a curveball that we were thrown during the filming that we had to, you know, we had this new person on the scene. It wasn't just John fighting for Julian. It was now stellar as well. And we were able to capture all that. And I think that works so well in the film. Yeah, that's great. Hey, guys, check out my new sponsor.

It's Peacehawk Coffee at piecehawk. Coffee. First of all, business. You have to drink coffee in the morning. And you want it to taste good. Well, Peacehawk coffee is the best from around the world. But then, just as important, Peacehawk coffee donates at least a dollar of every pound sold to worthy foreign aid organizations like Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation.

When you buy Peacehawk Coffee, you're not only buying great coffee. You have a chance to support the economies of countries struggling against the effects of war and support Private Aid Foundations doing life-saving work abroad. Sign up for their email list and get yourself some great coffee at peacehawk.comfee. Hey, I'll Scott Horton here for the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org. I'm the director. Then we've got Sheldon Richmond, Kyle Anzalone, Keith Knight, Lori Calhoun, Jim Bovard, Connor Freeman,

Will Porter, Patrick M. Farley, and Tommy Salman's on our staff, writing and podcasting. And we've also got a ton of other great writers, too, like Walter Block, Richard Booth, Boss Spleet, Kim Robinson, and William Van Wagonin. We've published eight books so far, including my latest,

Hotter Than the Sun, Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and Keith Knight's new Voluntarius Handbook. And we've got quite a few more great ones coming soon. Check out Libertarian Institute.org slash books. It's a whole new era. We libertarians don't have the power, but we do have enough influence

to try to lead the left and the right to make things right. Join us at Libertarian Institute.org. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things Comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner,

Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee, Benedict Cumberbatch. Andy Sandberg, Kate McKinnon, and Alison Janney, a hilarious new comedy filled with drama, 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 then, so there are scenes in there where they're meeting with, I guess, different parliaments in Europe and with UN officials and this and that. Can you talk a little bit more about the effort on the ground that they've been making here? You all have been. I know you're behind the camera, I guess, here.

Yeah, so they've been advocating, you know, all around the world, you know, from three continents, Australia, Europe, and the U.S., meeting with parliamentarians in many European countries, and forming these, sort of coalescing these groups in parliament. For example, in Australia, there is now an official parliamentary, what they call a parliamentary Friends of Julian Assange group that has over 50 parliamentarians, over a quarter of the Australian Parliament. And so when John started advocating for Julian, there was only two parliamentarians and now they're up to 50. And that really speaks to what I was talking about before, this sort of worldwide movement for freedom of expression that has developed through the fight to free Julian. But it's up to John and Stella to really change the narrative around Julian's case. And I think we show that in the film by a lot of the interactions they have

with a mostly, you know, antagonistic prestige media, you know, the channels like the BBC or CNN interviews that John and Stella do with them and sort of countering the 10 years of demonization and dehumanization that Julian suffered that was sort of put in place to allow this unprecedented espionage act prosecution to move forward. It was this tactic to really give Julian the ick factor so that people didn't think that he had a right to due process or human rights, or his right to asylum

that was taken from him, freedom of movement that's been taken from him. But that was all possible through this demonisation, this 10 years of Julian being called, you know narcissistic or you know doesn't feed his cat or you know didn't wash his dishes like why does this matter and i think nils melzer says in the film you know Julian shone the light on their crimes and the tactic that was used against him was they turned the light around and pointed on on Julian but at the end of the day it's you know their war crimes their corruption and and their torture

that we need to remember and that we need to keep the focus on. Yeah. Well, and also the betrayal by the rest of the media, and this is something that Andrew Coburn had written about a couple of weeks ago in Harper's magazine is, you know, they're all a bunch of Charlie Savage's

the disgraced New York Times reporter who's, you know, put a few thousand words into his effort to explain why Julian Assange is in a real journalist like he is. Because what he does is he repeats whatever the CIA wants him to repeat. And what Assange does is he publishes CIA documents that they did not want published. And so that's why Charlie Savage has a job and

Julian Assange is in prison. But of course, it just speaks to Charlie Savage's guilt and it goes to show that he sold his soul so cheaply. He doesn't even know how badly he indicts himself when he writes that way about Julian Assange. That's right. Savage, you're nothing like Julian Assange. We all agree with that. And so, and that is such a huge important part of the story is all these people throwing this man under the bus when what's at stake here is whether the government can prosecute journalists and publishers rather than just leakers, but leakies under the espionage act. And they've never gotten away with this before and they're trying to get away with it now. As Coburn pointed out, only very last minute here did the New York Times, I'm sure,

with no help from Savage, but the New York Times, The Guardian, and a couple of others finally wrote this letter in support of Assange after, you know, the example's been made and after he's been punished without trial this whole time. And I guess they feel like, you know, now that he's been punished enough, they want to go ahead and try to intervene a little bit before they're actually threatened. It's pretty disgusting behavior. So we'll note it. But now, let me ask you about Nils Melser some more and about the state of Assange's health here. And talk about in the movie, well, first of all, if you could describe who Melser is and his takes and what he knows about Assange, but also they talk in the movie about how

in court the judge asked him his birthday and he said, lady, I don't know. And so there was a real question of just how mad they have driven this guy. But as you say before, they let him out of solitary finally here. I wonder if he's doing much better if you're as worried about him as you were before, that kind of thing. Yeah, certainly, you know, we are always worried that Julian's not going to make it through this. You know, we're all, his whole family are all surrounding him, supporting him. You know, we show that through the film as well. You know, Stella's supporting him through these phone calls and visits to the prison, you know,

twice a week with the children so we're doing all we can to to really you know support Julian to get through this as as is a whole you know millions of people around the world you know whenever we whenever we meet some of Julian's old friends or or tell him what he's what we're up to and all the support that he has that really keeps him going as well Nils Melsa is was is the ex-U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture. So a special rapporteur is a sort of independent person, you know, given a mandate by the UN to investigate torture around the world.

So he usually works in places, you know, authoritarian regimes, places where, you know, you would commonly expect, you know, persecution to exist in the Caribbean or some places in Africa. And that's where he comes from and that's his sort of mandate from the UN. And, you know, interestingly, and we show this in the film, that he had these biases to begin with as well. the demonization and the dehumanization of Julian that I talked about, had worked its way into his biases as well. And he admits that now. He admits that he had been deceived by all these prestige media reports

about Julian and that when he first received an email requesting his help from Julian's lawyers, that he dismissed it, saying, you know, I don't want to get involved in this, you know, not this Assange character. and it was his internal biases that were coming forward then. Then he got another email and he talks about that and he said, well, maybe I should look into this and maybe I should investigate this and really thought about why did he have this bias

and where was it coming from? Where was this information coming from that led him to develop this bias? And then he started to dig into the case. the case and really go into it. He's a Swedish speaker and he was able to go through all the Swedish documents related to the Swedish investigation, which was, you know, the longest running investigation in Swedish history, you know, open and closed four times, full of irregularities, leaks to media. And he was really able to go into that. into that and really dig deeply into that and use freedom of information, emails that were obtained from the UK prosecutors, one of which is very telling it is the Swedish prosecutor writing to the UK prosecutor when Julian was in the Ecuadorian embassy and the Swedish prosecutor is saying, oh, you know, we want to get rid of this.

case this investigation you know it's gone on too long and the the UK prosecutor writes back to the Swedish prosecutor and says you're not getting cold feet this is about more than a simple extradition and so you have these sort of illuminating emails that exist about this you know abusive process by Swedish prosecutors and the British prosecuting service to keep Julian in the embassy you know it wasn't about this investigation at all it was a tactic to keep him in the in the embassy and so nils melzer goes into all of that and he's written a great book called the trial of julian asange uh which is really uh you know if you read any book on the case that's the

one yeah uh i have as soon as i'm done with my book i have a pile of assange books i got Kevin Costola's brand new book, and then there's the one by the great Italian journalist lady and Nils Melser's book. We're going to do a whole, you know, deep dive on Assange, but I'm kicking the can down the road because I'm behind on my own. Listen, one last thing I have to go, but can you please tell me very quickly, did I read somewhere that the Australian government is finally kind of sticking their neck out here a little bit and hinting that they would prefer that he just be released to their care now? Yeah. So the Australian Prime Minister has, you know, made statements like enough's enough and he doesn't see what purpose has served of Julian being in prison. He said he's made representations to the Biden administration. He will be meeting with Biden in San Diego on Monday, him and the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. So that's a perfect opportunity

for, you know, them to these three people who are all in. involved in Julian's persecution to get together and bring this to a close. But yeah, he's advocating for Julian now, which is a huge change from previous governments. And really that stems from the support that Julian has in the Australian electorate, which is 88% of whom want Julian brought home. That's great. And a great place to end it. Yep, it's public opinion at the end of the day. That's what counts. But the people have to be on the right side of these things and they have to make their voices heard. Listen, sorry, we're out of time. I've got a million more questions for you here, but best of luck to you. And thank you so much for your great effort to free

the hero, Julian Assange. Really appreciate it, Gabriel. Jesus, 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.