TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #247: Julian Assange, The Espionage Act, Julian's Defense, and Journalistic Freedom in 2021 with Gabriel Shipton

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

Join Marty and Matt as they sit down with Gabriel Shipton, brother of Julian Assange, to discuss: - Julian's ongoing trial - How the US Government is wrongfully persecuting Julian - The bogus rape charges lobbed against Julian - The US Government's Espionage charges - Journalism in 2021 - Why Julian's case is very important for the future of journalism - How to support Julian's defense fund - much more Follow Gabriel on Twitter Support Julian's defense fund here Shoutout to this week's sponsors. Cash App. Start #stackingsats today. Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to OWLS Lacrosse when you download the app. Lend at Hodl Hodl is a new non-custodial bitcoin backed lending platform, that allows peer to peer lending and borrowing between users, globally, anonymously & on your own terms. Create you offers & set your own terms on lend.hodlhodl.com Compass Mining. Compass wants to democratize bitcoins hashrate and give everyone the ability to strengthen the network while mining bitcoin profitably. Thanks to Compass, it’s never been easier to mine bitcoin. Check them out at compassmining.io Braiins. Braiins are leaders in the mining industry; running Slush Pool, creating firmware to make miners more profitable (Braiins OS+), and building out Stratum V2 to help further decentralize mining and make Bitcoin more robust. Check out their mining profitability calculator.

What's up, freaks? It's your boy Marty Ben here to introduce this episode of Tales from the Crypt. The immense pleasure of being joined by Matt O'Dell to sit down with Gabriel Shipton, the brother of Julian Assange. Very heavy episode, very important episode. Yeah, the Julian Assange saga continues. He's being held up in court in the UK. The U.S. is appealing the U.K. court's decision to not extradite Julian to the United States on the basis that if he were to be extradited, they fear that he would harm himself, potentially commit suicide. Yeah, it's fucked up what's going on, freaks.

Do we live in a free country? Julian Assange simply created a website that people would share information with and he would share that information to the public trying to hold our government accountable for killing innocent civilians abroad in the name of U.S. citizens using weapons purchased with U.S. tax dollars and fiat-printed ex nihilo.

It's disgusting stuff. And this man, for sharing this information, is being persecuted, hunted down, tortured. Tortured. Cruel and unusual punishment. they're just extending this this trial first they they tried to throw rape charges at him were completely unfounded and when those charges didn't stick the u.s years later stepped in and said all right we're going to charge you with espionage this is a very important case very important story mainstream media doesn't seem to want to be covering it they're burying it under

a bunch of bullshit nobody wants to talk about this very important very important precedent being said here with how journalists are allowed to distill information and what people are allowed to talk about the government is not your friend the intelligence agencies the intelligence agencies are not our friends they do not give a fuck about you freaks listen to this spread this if you can contribute to julian's defense case please do so we're going to link to uh the page where you can do that you can you can support the defense fund via bitcoin if you want to there's other routes as well yeah make a stink about this share this episode

this is like the one time i'll ever do this in the beginning episode like I usually just try to put the content out there, and if you freaks like it, share it, if you will. Each episode has different varying degrees of popularity on social, but I think this one, I feel compelled to compel you freaks to share it far and wide. This should be the most liked, most retweeted episode in TFTC history because it's very important.

We need to get out in front of the U.S. government trying to curb actual journalism. There's very few actual journalists and actual journalism outlets that are producing good journalism. They're mostly, these days, just extensions of the state and state propaganda arms. Feels weird rolling into an ad read here, but we have to. If people paid for an ad, does it? App was brought to you by your good friends at the Cash App. the cash app so you stack sets and sets receive sets sell sets if you so please i'm saying sat

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Julian Assange he's being tortured by the US government not directly but they're mentally torturing him and it's time this stops and not only because it's the right thing to do but the future of journalism information distillation and freedom this is a very important story about freedom in the digital age and nobody's talking about the mainstream media is not talking about it gabriel felt compelled to get out the bitcoin podcast because nobody in the mainstream wants to talk to him it's crazy at tftc this dirty part of the internet has to be the microphone for julian's family to get the message out what does that say what does that say about

the mainstream media what does that say about quote-unquote journalism in today's world is it even journalism anymore is it simply propaganda that's for you to decide enjoy this rip you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. You probably should be. what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt it's your boy marty bent back i got my co-host matt odell here for the first interview in quite a while matt it's good to it's good to be here it's it's good to have you back and i i think it's important that you're here for this particular conversation before i hit record i was expounding upon how i'm very heated today or very energized i don't

want to say heated because uh just been doing a lot of observation and and at the world at large right now and it seems that people are straying away from objective truth they're being driven to a mass psychosis that is being driven by illusions spun up by whatever you want to call it the media political academic class that's manipulating data and information for certain outcomes and the our guest tonight is gabriel shipton the brother of julian assange filmmaker and i think uh julian's life mission and what he did while he was not behind bars while he's not incarcerated was literally searched to get objective truth to the rest of the world and so i'm very excited to have you here gabriel thank

you for joining us thank you very much it's good to be with you guys tonight yeah i mean so i guess just to to jump into the conversation like what we really want to talk about and get the message out about uh tonight is the status of julian's case how he's doing what is um what is going on at the current moment the way i understand it uh he there's some hold-ups in the british courts the u.s government is basically causing is that a correct uh description of yeah so julian basically won won his case on january 4th um you know the judge rejected the extradition and then a few days later um you know the u.s appealed basically straight away uh appealed that decision straight away um and then a few days later the judge rejected his bail

so he's been uh you know he's been in prison he's in the third year of his um in in Belmarsh maximum security prison you know without uh he hasn't been sentenced or anything so he's just sort of you know there amongst like um you know murderers and violent criminals um who most of most of whom have been sentenced but he's he's just there on remand so the next uh the next stage now is that um the appeal arguments have been lodged by the um by the u.s and a counter appeal has been lodged by the defense and the high court in the uk will decide whether to hear the appeal in the next month or so we expect it could be early as may that they will decide and it's 95 likely that they will hear the appeal and uh you know the appeal could take place as

early as july uh this year um so if the extradition was rejected on um uh you know like mental health grounds and well-being basically so they they the judge concluded that extraditing julian to the u.s would would basically be a death sentence for him But the likelihood of his suicide would be would be so high that, you know, extraditing him would be he would just likely kill himself. So it was rejected on that on that basis. But all the other points of law, all the you know, all these sort of charges, you know, about these Espionage Act charges were all upheld. So it has set a sort of dangerous precedent already in the UK for this sort of reporting. If I understand correctly, as he's being held up and incarcerated, he's under solitary confinement for a lot of the day.

Is that correct? Yeah, well, you know, basically it's COVID, you know, the prison's in basically a COVID lockdown. So I saw him in October last year, and I was the last person to visit him physically, so in the prison. So since October last year, he hasn't been able to see his lawyers in person, he hasn't been able to see his family in person. So he's basically, you know, COVID restrictions means that he's in his cell, you know, 23 hours a day.

there's no sort of you know you can't go out you get one hour of you know to shower and go out and etc so yeah he's he's basically in in you know effective solitary confinement he does get phone calls that's the sort of one thing that's um keeping him going uh phone calls to um uh you know his family so how was he how was he in october when you saw him yeah look he was you know he's suffering he's you know he's been sort of on this constant uh pressure for for the last 11 years right so uh you know that's had an effect on him you know i've watched him sort of you know deteriorate over over that time um you know these un special rapporteur on torture has found that you know he's he's he's been psychologically tortured and and those effects you can you can

see um so it's quite it's quite distressing um but yeah we just have to keep you know cracking on and fighting trying to um you know stop stop this prosecution have the biden administration drop these charges basically are you hopeful that's possible i think yeah i mean i think you So we just, you know, we just have to keep pushing. I think, you know, I was over in the US in January and, you know, amazed by the amount of support there is on the ground there, you know, from grassroots type people.

So, you know, that's really heartening. And those, you know, I think that's the first step is this grassroots, you know, push on Congress people and to get them to sort of really lobby biden um so so i think it is possible yes but it's it's going to be it needs to be a movement basically it's not they're not going to just um they're not going to just drop the charges without any pressure i don't think yeah i mean it's so disheartening right like america land of the free home of the brave liberty freedom freedom of information freedom to share information what wiki weeks did again was basically just share

information that was brought to them and they shared objective truth and said hey if you want to dissect this information that we've gotten access to and and do some journalism around it here here are the files and and the fact that the u.s government particularly the intelligence apparatus around the u.s government is so adamant and squashing this information that americans should have access to no questions asked is quite frightening right and this is happening this has happened multiple times over the last decade julian uh being being one one of the individuals uh chelsea manning being another and then edward snowden being a third many others throughout the history of the united states and it's i don't know if you want to dive into

like the the conversation about like why is this happening and why is it so i know you're you're in australia i mean i think i think you're right i mean you know the freedom of information the first amendment the constitution these are the great the things that are so great about the u.s right that's every every like you know i know in australia we're all sort of you know jealous of of the first amendment and the constitution it's really um you know an amazing thing that you guys have and uh and then sort of fighting for that is is really important and you know i think what's happened here is is what's different about julian's case you know traditionally this espionage act has been used to go after the whistleblowers so like you were saying you snowden um you know daniel

Hale recently um Chelsea Manning um you know even uh far back as Daniel Ellsberg but but now what they're trying to do is they're is they're they're taking the espionage act and they're saying well let's you know we can find a workaround for the espionage act to go after publishers now so it's not just uh it's not just the leakers it's the actual people publishing the information so that that is a totally new way um that this sort of you know 1917 espionage act is being used to sort of silence uh you know silence publishers and and governments i mean and and these media organizations um so that's that's totally new and and i think that's or you're already already seeing that sort of chilling effect like like every time a sort of national security article

comes to Washington Post or the New York Times then they have to consider whether they are going to be charged under the Espionage Act for publishing it and then that has a flow-on effect of whistleblowers so a whistleblower can can now look and say well if I blow the whistle on this and I take it to the Washington Post then they're not going to publish it because they could be charged under the espionage act so it's um it's just it's you know total total control over the sort of media landscape by uh by by you know basically the security state and you see it creeping even further with the the push to repeal section 230 which would make social media platforms uh liable for the content post on their platforms as well

i think it's a good point to circle back to the original intent of the espionage actor right was it was it intentionally for treasonous acts and that's what makes this so worrisome is because basically again like what julian did with wiki leaks what bradley manning did what edward snowden did was attempt to hold the government accountable for for actions which they deem to be against the best interests of american citizens not trying to undermine america uh citizen american citizens at the end of the day yeah i mean it's basically yes you're right to know what what what what your government's doing in your name um you know people people have the right to know this information i mean you know if you if you're voting for somebody and and and you don't you

don't know who you're voting for you don't know what you're getting because the information you're allowed to see the information then you know what is your vote worth you know it's a sort of it's almost just a performance um that you know you don't know what you're voting for so you know why bother basically i mean matt and i always have this discussion are we free matt are we free um you know i got cut off there for a little bit and of course you know the brain runs wild when you get cut off in a conversation like this um so i i hope i'm not uh repeating something that was already said um but uh the uh the argument is that julian um aided someone who was breaking the espionage

act almost like provide an instruction to break that act and the defense is that he was that he's a journalist and he's acting in as a journalist and he deserves protection you know as a journalist under the american constitution um is that a correct uh characterization of the situation yeah i mean so so i think there's there's one computer uh not not exactly some of the espionage act charges are solely for publishing so solely for putting the information um up online so there are there are portions of it where they're saying yeah there was a conspiracy to uh you know get this information and publish it which is what sort of journalists encourage sources all the time to to get information but there is a there are there are i think uh 15 15 to 17 is is solely for

actually just publishing the information online so you know um this this could be applied to say you know any of these news organizations any of them uh any sort of bloggers any sort of social media that that they put this information online as well so um you know it's it's it's not just these sort of journalistic activities it's the actual act of publishing as well it's being criminalized i think that so that's a very important point i i i think what is a to me as someone who grew up during this this basically this international vendetta against assange against your brother um unfold um what really woke me up to injustice um motive was the fact that and people so easily forget nowadays right is that is that he he was in the ecuadorian embassy

in in the uk um fighting extradition charges to sweden for for rape accusations and i remember clear as day u.s government proponents saying that this was not anything to do with the u.s it was completely unrelated it had nothing to do with it yeah and that extended extended extended and then only after all of that and then the rape cases got thrown out did these espionage charges get leveled out correct yeah yeah well i mean it's just the ultimate fud you know like it's it's it's been there's been there's been the ultimate fud being played on him for the last 10 years basically characters yeah yeah so you know it's just it's just a technique you know like they just go after you um i guess really just recently what's

just come out in the last few days is um how the uk government uh you know basically was was trying to get the ecuadorian government to kick julian out of the embassy so they were courting them you know flying them over to the uk paying for their flights and all this sort of stuff like the defense minister from ecuador um you know saying you know trying to get them to to push julian out but but what stopped them was there was resistance within within ecuador because it would have been very unpopular within ecuador so then um so then they came up with this campaign right where they started leaking things so saying oh Julian's a bad guest in the Ecuadorian embassy um you know there's dirty dishes he doesn't look after his cat all these sort of you know weird

stories that just just keep coming out to change the narrative to change the ideas of the Ecuadorian people that um you know Julian is a bad house guest basically so it's okay to kick him out and the sort of the sort of culmination of that was this um you know fabricated Manafort uh Manafort story that went into the Guardian saying that Manafort went and visited Julian and it's just it's a total fabrication there's no there's no logs at the embassy there's you know the the embassy's totally surveilled there's no surveillance of Manafort even ever ever ever been there so it's this this these techniques of the of um of you know the status so you know they're just sort of laid bare during this case was was the guardian complicit in spreading those like

did they know that was the case and published it anyway yeah they changed the they changed the headline like they they published it and then a few days later they changed they real they realized that they couldn't like verify the sources of the story so they they down they changed the headline online and and sort of dumbed it dumbed the story down you know put in allegedly and things like that so i mean at the time at the time the ecuadorian embassy in london was like one of the most surveilled buildings in the world like this is not a this is not a large embassy this is not some kind of uh fortress this is it's almost like an office complex it's like this it's a small little embassy quote-unquote embassy that is completely surveilled by not only the uk

police um and special service or whatever they call them over there um but presumably the whole media establishment right like this is a a compelling story that can drive clicks like they're all watching all this stuff the paparazzi is all over this yeah so to claim ignorance on a story like that uh is is awfully suspicious in general um the guardian does have a history in you know assange related cases i mean specifically with snowden um a bunch of the snowden documents all got they they all got wiped from their computers um they said it was a raid that they weren't complicit in you know for whatever it's worth in the uk you don't really have free speech you don't have the kind of protections that we have in america i mean we're talking about

those protections being abused but still they don't have anywhere near those kind of protections and you just witness this happen over and over again it's not a fair fight it's not it's not it's not the justice system that is that is told when you're growing up in America about you know how America has this super fair justice system where you're going to be tried in front of your peers and I just remember I still remember just growing up being like an impressionable you and i there was like there was really hard arguments that people were making you know why why is julian hiding from the rape cases in sweden why is he doing it he's not going to get extradited the u.s doesn't want him like they're not going to bring him over you know and it's i

feel like it's a it no one talks about like very few people are talking about that at this point you know they forget people forget very quickly yeah it's been memory hold right and like matt i couldn't stop thinking about another uh phrase that's drilled into our head particularly in the context of the judicial system in the court system the truth shall prevail and it's like this is and it's completely ironic uh from that the guardian would be complicit in something like that considering that if the intelligence community and the apparatus and the u.s government gets its way like it becomes liable for actually doing journalism and then that leads to the question is do they actually care about doing journalism or are they just an arm of the

state at this point oh yeah i mean that's questions going through my mind right now yeah yeah well i mean the gut you know the government you know just just in the last year they've put out um you know they've sort of changed their tune you know they're saying they've seen the importance of this case and so they put out editorial um supporting supporting julian supporting the rejection of the extradition so you know i hope some some of these people realize that what you know what what they have invested in this case you know it actually affects them um so you know i think you've seen that with you know washington post putting out editorial uh you know the new York Times is putting out opinion in support of Julian so they're all sort of realizing that

you know what this actually means for their livelihoods and and their you know their media entities that it that it's it's going to totally just change the landscape I mean they should be applauded for that right but like every journalist in the world should be fighting for this fight yeah that's right yeah are you a true journalist if you're not i don't i don't think you can say so how has this affected you as julian's brother what's this experience been like for you on the outside looking in uh yeah i mean i just you know really uh you know i think julian is you know i i think julian you know like for me it's just uh you know julian's suffering is is is um you know we're just trying to trying to get him out basically um you know i don't really think

about you know how it's affected me because there's uh people who are you know who are really really suffering in this um so you know i mean i you know i've been lucky that i can you know come and talk to you on this podcast and and different things like that so um you know i'm lucky that i can i can help in this way um that's basically yeah but i get i think that's one one thing about this julian's case particularly but others like it is they completely dehumanize the subjects of these stories the subjects of these cases these individuals and and treat them as as basically isolated beings that don't have a connection to the outside world or family loved ones they create another they demonize these subjects and i think really does a disservice to the human

level of these individuals and what their true intentions are i guess yeah i mean it's a great you know, like it's a perfect example of, you know, what can happen if you, you know, draw the ire of these states, you know, they can, this is what it is possible to do, you know, to go after people and in this manner, you know, that's some of these things like, you know, the arguments for, you know, pseudonymous publishing and things like that,

like things that are sort of popular within the crypto community to sort of put up protections. How do you protect yourself against these sort of attacks that dehumanise you, that, you know, give you that ick factor? You know, what protections can you put in place to, you know, to sort of, you know, protect you from these attacks that it will eventually come if you are on the wrong side of the states.

you know they state state actors but i mean this is not an argument that is foreign to julian right like when when when he was when he was a you know a young man himself um a lot of his peers said you know you should you know not be so public about it um and i'm i'm not victim blaming i think you know julian's one of his legacies will be that he and i i don't want to put words in his mouth but i i feel what i take from him and what i is as a public person myself um is that is that we you can't be scared you can't be scared to speak your mind you can't be scared to stand up publicly um you should absolutely selectively be private uh and there's a place for these defensive measures in terms of protecting your identity and whatnot um but there's great power

in being a public figure that that stands up would you agree yeah and julian's case you know um i think jillian's on the record is saying that you know he's he's the lightning rod basically for Wikileaks, you know, that Wikileaks is an organisation, a bunch of people. But he's been able to be that lightning rod, you know, that sort of diverts all electricity away from the building, right, like, you know, when the lightning strikes. So that's a, you know, that's the sort of part of the idea there.

I mean, one of the things is with, you know, obviously it's been bad for him personally but 10 years ago they they when they published this stuff they they they knew that they were going to come under attack uh like this and this is this the plan that they had i don't think maybe they didn't know it would be so bad uh and and so vicious and uh but but yeah they knew that there would be um you know constant attacks after after all these things they published like you're sort of kicking the hornet's nest you know like to quote uh yeah satoshi but i think yeah that's you know what you know what's interesting is that yeah like with bitcoin you know so you know with satoshi that there is no head there is no

uh you know there's no sort of person to go after uh in this way so you know that that sort of element of decentralization is quite, you know, is why, you know, there's no sort of central point of attack for Bitcoin, whereas, you know, WikiLeaks, it's, you know, infrastructure, it's web infrastructure is decentralized, but it has that centralized leader that is the focus of all these attacks. So it's an interesting comparison there. Yeah, I mean, just like as a Bitcoiner and somebody who's probably pushed closer to Bitcoin because of what happened to julian and edward snowden and chelsea manning it's fascinating that bitcoin's path crossed with wiki leaks of the way it did where wiki leaks at the particular point

in time in which they needed a alternative payments network was almost too much attention for the bitcoin network at that particular size and like you mentioned satoshi said we don't want to kick the hornet's nest right now like even satoshi was worried about that and that attention from the state and that ire from the state. And with that comment, some can glean that he thought at that point, Bitcoin could have been taken down by the state. Bitcoin did wind up providing utility for WikiLeaks at the end, and still does to till today. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it was the first, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but, you know, it's the first sort of use case for Bitcoin as, you know, censorship free money, you know,

some some money that couldn't be interfered with you know the biggest sort of you know wiki leaks you know sort of totally under attacked you know regulatory attacks and and they when they switched to bitcoin it was you know bitcoin couldn't be taken down they used it perfectly so uh you know really um a use case for for showing that that that bitcoin couldn't be um you know messed with by by this by state actors or regulatory bodies and things like that this is getting me all jacked up like oh i like want to scream right now like like why like why can't we like why are we at a point where objective truth is is shied away from it's persecuted

and like how are we actively allowing the government that's supposed to serve us is supposed to protect our rights to access to information to to persecute somebody like you can make a constitutional argument that this is cruel and unusual punishment at this point with the years that this is dragged on and and considering julian's mental state with with all this like how do we as americans allow our government to keep perpetuating this and obviously matt and i have been following the story for a while and we're certainly on julian's side and there's many in the united states and there's a growing grassroots movement like you mentioned i'm coming to his support but i can't the pessimist in me can't

can't stop thinking like they don't give a fuck and like what does that say that they don't give the fuck yeah it's like people have lost their you know people have lost their principles you know it's all it's become everything's seen through political ideology you know truth is uh you know truth you can sacrifice truth for something that you love right like so so you know if you whether that's your party or or or you know you're trying to protect your family truth becomes this um this sort of something that you can sacrifice to to to get something that you want you know i think but but but if we sort of come back to people's principles and and and you know what is what is you know what is actually right what what

you know when it comes down to it are these war crimes wrong you know what i mean like do people see them you know do they really think that that that um you know war crimes are right i don't think people do you know i think people people you know everyone generally is is is good hearted and thinks that you know murdering civilians is bad so you know that's that's really what we what it comes down to like it is literally impossible to watch i mean the the famous video in question of the american troop shooting a bunch of journalists from a helicopter to know that they misfired killed a bunch of innocent journalists and not be like what the hell are we as an american citizen like why why are we doing this how does this happen

how come there's no accountability and to throw the person who highlights this in jail and essentially torture them for for years on end like what what does that say about the government that we live under again matt do we live in a free society like what is like how how do we fix this i mean look like everything else is nuanced right yes um you know there's a lot of imperfections in our society and what what what I think and I I'm going back to it again you know and I think it's very important to highlight because it's it's it's it's his it's his legacy and his legacy Julian's legacy to me will be one of defiance and it's one of it's one of exposing the injustices right and and there was

a lot of there was a lot of members of the cypherpunk community that in their view wikileaks should have been something that was a tour only onion only organization that had no formal leaders and had no names attached to it right and julian had a completely opposite opinion on that He, he, he believes that you need to be outspoken that you need to be in front, you need to be on stage, you need to be talking about these things. And if he if he didn't do that, you know, if Aaron Schwartz didn't do that, if Julian Assange didn't do that, then we wouldn't be having this conversation today, it would be something that's happening on the dark alleys of the internet, instead of being right up front and center. And I think that's super important, regardless, and they can't take that away from him. And they know that the powers that be know that and it kills them inside, right? It kills them that they can't, that they can't squat that, as far as they're concerned, they'd rather be on no newspapers, they don't want they don't, they don't care about your opinion one way or the other. they don't want it to be front page news you know this idea that that they couldn't pressure this small government of ecuador this tiny little country to hand him over they couldn't destroy his reputation through you know swedish rape accusations and now to this point they can't

they can't extradite him um is infuriating and every day that it continues is a tragedy but at the same time it's an inspiration it's it's a fight and i i think it's important to highlight that aspect because i think it's it's profound and it's important yeah thanks for sure julian would be happy about that that's very uh you know it's pretty good insight i think there i think it's very important no i think i i tend to agree with that right like what type of society are we like i completely respect anybody that uses a nim to put these ideas out there but if we have to fall back to a society that depends on nims to distill information and you're not able to do it out in the open like is

it even worth living in um just a rhetorical question to throw out there like because that's world we want to live in i would say no and i've been saying this on this podcast and in the newsletter a lot recently it's like we need more strong men and women to stand up and speak proudly about what they believe in and like matt said that will be julian's legacy that he was a brave individual that was willing to do that and it's it's like i can't stop thinking of the the character assassination that he's been through which has led a bunch of lemmings in the masses to completely disregard some of the information that's come out of wikileaks since he's been incarcerated right and again people are gonna be like marty you're like you don't like left whatever but

like honestly wikileaks proved that there was corruption in the dnc particularly pushing hillary uh in front of bernie in the 2016 election and everybody glossed over that because of the character assassination of julian assange i mean the hate of assange crosses platforms it doesn't matter in america what what party you're a part of yeah um you know trump elevated it you know escalated it and continued it and didn't push back um agreed it is it is it is an anti-establishment platform that the establishment is obviously against which makes sense to a degree right logically it does make sense not to a degree like it's literally they cannot be the establishment if things like wiggly leaks are allowed to persist i'm curious gabriel like so like so we have we

have a a very you know freedom focused audience sovereignty focused audience um what can like what can our audience do productively here like how how do we how do we help this situation you know i guess you know uh one thing is about you know just sort of talking about it with your friends and and you know having discussions about you know actions that you can take and your things generate from that um you know getting on writing articles doing uh podcasts things like this is all good uh lobbying uh your you know congress people your representatives uh you know ringing them up you know setting meetings with them things like that uh particularly in the obviously in the united states that that's very helpful um you know donations there's the next stage of the

appeal which needs to be uh needs to be funded so we're taking donations uh you know i think we're accepting we're accepting uh obviously bitcoin um through a german foundation the holland foundation so people can go to their website to donate um you know and I think there's 10 or so cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and some others. So, yeah, I think, you know, like things like this are so helpful, just getting the sort of message out there, particularly when the establishment media is, you know, basically freezing it out, freezing out this story at the moment.

So, yeah, that's what, and, you know, like you say, Look, Julian's fight is, he is sort of, you know, standing up for all our rights. So I think, you know, that comes back to your point, Matt, that he is the one standing up and that we all sort of need to gather behind him, particularly the crypto community and, you know, those people. we need to stand behind him and and sort of you know support him as as because he is the lightning rod basically for for a lot of things so i did a i did a quick google search um don't extracite extradite assange.com is that a legit website is that what we're talking about yeah yeah or you can or the the the url for this is support assange dot wowland w-a-u-l-a-n-d dot d-e uh then there's there's also defend the signs which is the courage foundation

we'll link to all this and put it on the announcement tweet um so you guys can find it easily it's um yeah i mean i completely wholeheartedly agree like we need to rally around julian again my personal journey towards bitcoin i think wiki leaks and julian's story probably pushed me closer to bitcoin just helping to highlight the injustices and and the evil that exists in the world particularly some of the levels of the state and the fight for liberty in the digital age is upon us and you have to fight you can't just sit by and and let this stuff happen you got to stand up and speak up and again luckily we have julian assange being one of the stalwarts of the freedom fight in the digital age and so i guess one question i have

before we wrap up here is like what has julian talked to you about what he wants to do when he when he gets up it's top positive no i mean the you know the focus now is is um you know it's everything's focused on this fight um you know every conversation i have i've had with him over the past years has always been about about the fight uh you know and and that that is um that's what it's all about at the moment um but yeah i think you know my my dad talks a lot about like what you know will julian you know what will he just you know come out and settle down do a take a professorship at some university or something like that um i think i think that's you know that's a you know a sort of you know lead a quieter life but i i you know i don't know

if that uh that's never going to happen yeah it's a nice idea but um but yeah i think we um you know julian assange that we all know um i've come to know over the years uh you know he's a he's a you know he's a disidentified a revolutionary um at heart and so when the appeal does officially happen how long like how long would that take and could he potentially be free by the end of this year if it starts in july uh so if it starts in july then we would probably expect a decision um you know uh in the fall uh and then the u.s we would expect the u.s to appeal to the next court level so that would be the supreme court uh in the uk if it's um if if the u.s wins the appeal

sorry if julian wins the appeal then the u.s will uh appeal again to the supreme court and then obviously if julian loses the appeal then um he can he can then appeal to the supreme court or the european court of human rights um but yeah it doesn't that you know the judge is not going to give him bail uh which is just you know they're saying that you know they're not going to extradite him because of his his um you know mental health and then they put him back in the same conditions that caused the caused the um the issues in the first place so it's uh it's just sort of more of this sort of cruel punishment that just keeps going on and on in this case that's fucking disgusting it's like okay real um i appreciate for joining us i admire

your show thanks um we obviously here matt and i are huge fans of julian and the fight that he's fighting and is an inspiration and a hero i'm not going to speak i mean yeah i think i can speak for matwin a hero for particularly the the topics that we cover which are freedom and liberty in the digital age like i think it's safe to say that um he's emboldened the generation to to think about the stuff and to to look about this look into the stuff and attempt to fight back um the important thing that i that i want our audience to to realize is you don't have to agree with julian's political opinions or uh his slants on things yeah all you have to do is realize that it's absolutely ridiculous that a man has been put through this kind of injustice for spreading

information you don't have to agree with the information you could you could think the information is all garbage and fake even which it isn't but you could and still at that point the the injustice that has been done already is absolutely ridiculous it's completely unreasonable by any standard at least in western civilizations and and everyone should be against this kind of treatment and people should be for the free movement of information um and gabriel i i i appreciate that you came on the show i i appreciate your time um and and it it's it's just been an honor to be a part of this conversation with you um and and just know that that we stand with you and and i hope that our audience stands with you

um and and i hope they consider uh contributing to the defense fund because because you know at the end of the day um the u.s government proved that money does rule a lot around us um and that's why the first thing they did when they decided to go after him in wikileaks is they cut off visa mastercard and cut off the funding and and and bitcoin prevented them from fully cutting that off and that's why we're here yeah well and that's the thing like julian's enemies can just keep printing money right like that they can pay their bills pretty easily but uh you know julian doesn't have that luxury um so yeah any support is is really great and thank you so much for having me on and helping spread the message

Matt and Marty really good and I hope that if we can speak again it's under better circumstances I'm optimistic it can be, I know I was a little pessimistic earlier but hopefully the truth will

prevail here and hopefully the message gets out there and it freaks if you're listening speak up, stand up voice your support for Julian either vocally on twitter with your family members with your friends or financially by by donating to the defense fund gabriel good morning to you where you are i'm sure you've

got a long day ahead of you um yep thank you again for joining us thank you very much all right peace and love freaks