Latest / Conspiracy! The Show / The Extradition of Julian Assange

Transcript

The Extradition of Julian Assange · Conspiracy! The Show

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Conspiracy The Show, the world's most trusted conspiracy
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: dary podcast, with your hosts Adam Todd Brown and Olivia Hidar.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy The Show.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: I'm Adam Todd Brown and I'm Olivia Hidar.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: And that makes us your hosts. Olivia, how's it going.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: It's going well, it's going well. I actually like kind
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: of mean that for once.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: That's good to hear. Yeah, I'm fine, and I mean that,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm just fine for sure. We are are
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: talking about some ripped from the headline stuff. If I
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: had if I had a soundboard in reach, it would
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: play the Law and Order sting right now. Yeah, you know, yeah,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: the real the quick one, not the whole, not the
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: jazzy bass line intro.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Oh sure, I mean I love the Law and Order theme,
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: the classic Law and Order theme.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Have you ever seen Will Arnett play air Law and
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Order theme?
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: No, it is if you.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Can find video of it. It is one of the
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: funniest fucking things you'll ever see.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so good.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: We're talking about Julian Assange. We haven't talked about him
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: much because I think, like myself, you don't like Julian
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: the Sons that much.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: I don't. I don't like him personally. Yeah, I have
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: complicated feelings about his legal status, but like as a dude,
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: I don't like him.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can tell you someone I wouldn't want to
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: hang out with.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: And the thing about Julian Nossange as it relates to
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: wiki Leaks, it's kind of a separate the artist from
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: the art kind of thing, and Julian Assange himself has said, well,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: I'm like the face of wiki leaks. I'm the one
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: who when there's a controversy about something we've done, I'm
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: the one who kind of takes that on right, And
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: that means he gets a lot of heat for the
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: things wiki leaks does, But it also means he gets
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: a lot more credit for what wiki leaks does than
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: he might necessarily deserve. Yeah, so he's kind of become
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: this celebrity just because of his role in the company,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: whereas there are so many other people working behind the
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: scenes to actually pull this work off.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a figurehead. He's a very toxic figurehead. Like,
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: I don't know, if I were Wiki Leaks, I would
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: probably not want him to be the face of my organization.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he stepped down, didn't he. Uh, you know, I'm
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: pretty sure he's not with the head of Wiki Leaks anywhere.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, like, yeah, I feel like it would be
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: tough living at the Ecuadorian embassy and doing that at
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: the same time. Yeah, yeah, no, he's he is not anymore.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: He hasn't been for a while.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We're mostly talking about the controversy surrounding the US
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: wanting to extradite Julian Assange. Yeah, And it's one of
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: those things where sometimes the cost of an actual free
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: press and legitimately free speech is sometimes you got to
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: stick up for a guy who was accused of spreading
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: shit on the walls inside the Ecuadorian embassy, among other crimes.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: And like skateboarding in the halls and like, and also
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: a guy who was credibly accused of sexual assault by
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: multiple women in Sweden that like, we cannot talk about
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Julie Desage without.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Was it multiple multiple women? I thought it was just one.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: Really certain it was two women, oh at least Yeah.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So all of that obviously complicates matters. Julian Assance
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: just kind.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Of sucks, right, But all of that is kind of his, Like,
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: all of the ship on the walls, and the and
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: the rape and all that stuff is separate from why
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: governments want to hunt him, and that makes it so
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: annoying and complicated.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Right, So, before we dive into the extradition saga, let's
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: just get everyone up to speed on the Julian Assange
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: story up to this point, like really high level overview stuff.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: There's like movies about this. It's very complicated.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: I can't believe are you you're you're gonna pass by
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: the Julian A saga that was in the notes just
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: for the people at home.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I had Julian Assange saga in the notes, and
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: then I put in parentheses Julian A saga.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: I just I couldn't believe you would want to jump
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: lets get by it. That's great.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Well, hey, thanks, I appreciate it. Yeah. I just put
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: it in there hoping you would reference it and notice
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: it in the course of the podcast. He helped establish
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: WikiLeaks back in two thousand and six, a long time ago.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: It was when Bush was still in office, and a
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: lot of their more inflammatory material early on had a
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: lot to do with the Bush administration and our excursions
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: in the Middle East.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: Excursions.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one way to put it.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: That just makes it sound so much more lighthearted.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a tribe called quest Song, that's all that is.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: They made headlines not long after when they uploaded documents
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: that were supplied by US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I have a very interesting relationship to this story that
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: we will talk about at the end. Yeah.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: I can't wait because, yeah, you told me about.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: This in that I knew that hacker who turned Chelsea
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Manning in.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: That's just that that blows my mind.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but not at the time. It was like years
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: and years later and at a weird point in my
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: life where I was like, how are you showing up
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: in my life right now? It's weird. We'll talk about.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: It, yeah, but it's kind of a bad sign.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: In twenty ten, WikiLeaks released what has come to be
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: known as the Collateral Murder video. You ever watch this video?
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: I did it is when it came out.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's harrowing. It is basically a video of US
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: soldiers shooting civilians in Iraq from a helicopter, including a
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Reuters journalist and his.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: Ass Yeah, purposely. They meant to kill these civilians.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like Sarah Palin hunting wolves from a fucking helicopter?
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: Wait did that happen?
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Oh? Was that during the controversy?
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't remember that, but that just what it
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: came up makes me think of the thing came up.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Back when she was campaigning with John McCain.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah. No, sure, but what if she was trying to
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: stop a shape shift?
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Again, we don't know, you never.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Know, we they'll know.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Reuters had previously requested that video, as you might expect, sure,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: under a Freedom of Information Act request, and the government
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: said no. I cannot imagine what their reasoning was, probably
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: something like it's not in the public interest. Sure, yeah, sure.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: It's not national security. Blah blah blah. It was so
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: easy for them to just hide shit under the terrorism banner,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: especially during this time.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and still like all they really are, Still all
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: they really ever have to say is national security, and
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: of course shit just stays locked away for another twenty
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: five years. Released the Elvis files. But like, I want
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: to know what part of Argentina he lived in with
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: the Nazis.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: Right, It's just like it's hard to remember that mindset
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: of like what it was like back in like two
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: thousand and six two thousand and seven, when those was happening,
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: like it was just everywhere. It was just all in
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: the air, this like terrorism bullshit and like fear mongering.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: It was awful.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So later that same year, twenty ten, WikiLeaks released
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: the Iraq war Logs, which was a collection of more
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: than three hundred thousand US Army field reports from the
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: war covering two thousand and four to two thousand and
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: nine whole franchise. This was They dropped two sequels in
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: rapid succession, the Afghanistan war Logs, which was Part two
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: and the Guantanamo Bay Files, which was Part three, released
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: in July twenty ten in April twenty eleven, respectively. And
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: they also at one point released a bunch of US
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: diplomatic cables that were referred to as the Cablegate Files.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Cable Gate Files are arguably the most important thing they
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: released for one thing, at least in part it leads
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: to the Arab Spring, Yes, because the diplomatic cables were
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: just exactly what it sounds like, US diplomats from all
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: around the world reporting back to probably the CIA about
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: what they're learning in their respective countries, and it was
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: just basically everyone's corrupt, there is there are no good governments.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Thankfully the diplomatic cables changed that and now there's seven,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: of course, just fantastic governments operating on the world state.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Look, the Arab Spring was a great thing, and like,
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: can't all last forever?
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: What is crazy about these files? And I didn't put
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: all of this in the notes, but I don't know
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: why that matters to people listening. But at one point,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: unredacted versions of all of these cables got leaked, which
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: is an obviously huge problem. And the way it happened,
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Julian Assange had given these files to a journalist and
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: gave him an encryption key that he could read them with. Yeah,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: and that journalist used these files in part to write
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: a book, and for reasons I will never understand, Apparently
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: he put that encryption key in the book, assuming it
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: was a thing that would have just like expired after
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: a day or two when Julian Assange gave it to him,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: And nope, it had not expired, and people were able
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: to use that encryption key to unredact these cables. And
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: at one point Julie Assan is like, what do I do?
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: What do I do? What do I do. I got it.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: I'm just gonna release the unredacted files myself. It's like,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: that is a that's a weird course of action, Bud,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: that that might have been the wrong turn.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: To take personally. Sure, I kind of like that's but
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: like that's the sort of thing where I'm like, I
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: kind of have to be like, okay, that's well.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: His argument was basically that everyone who might be targeted
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: because of these files needs to know also. Sure, so
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: it can't just be a thing where those people are
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: walking around unaware that they're named in these files that
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: have been unredacted by the fucking intelligence community.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that makes sense.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: His argument was, you know, everyone should know about it
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: and adjust their lives accordingly. But him uploading those with
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: the CIA, him uploading those unredacted files is what really
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: got him on the government's radar. I mean they were
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: obviously he was. He was on the radar before that.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: Of course, of course.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: And so that's all the Chelsea Manning stuff that is.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I don't remember that. I don't
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: think the diplomatic cables came from Chelsea Manning. But all
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: of the like the Kuantanamo files, the Afghanistan files, Iraq files,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: those combined with him unreleased him releasing those unredacted cables.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: That's what gets the government after Julian Assange, and they
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: start investigating Julian Assange around that time, that was twenty ten,
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: twenty eleven. But it comes up at one point. I
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: always talk about how when several different administrations all kind
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: of agree on one thing, like something is afoot, and
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: that's obviously the case with Julian Assange, where Obama, Trump,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Biden have all kind of been in lockstep when it
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: comes to Julian Assange, even though Trump, you know, publicly
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: was like, hey, I love Wiki leaks. I hope they
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: find those emails. But that's sure Trump being a fucking idiot.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: But also the Obama administration, they were the first ones
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: to start investigating Julian Assange. But fair is fair in
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: their case, they argued they could not indict Julian Assange
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: because then they would have to indict the journalists who
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: published this material. Also, it was Trump who changed course
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: on that and in twenty seventeen started investigating Julian Assange
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: with the intent to prosecute him under the nineteen seventeen
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: espionage Act, which was meant to fight spies in World
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: War One. But what's interesting is Biden hasn't bad away
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: from that either.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Huh. That is interesting.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: And I know we have our heart set on the
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: idea that because a Democrat is in office, the US
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: government is good now.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: But of course, I mean that's my belief. Are you
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: going to shatter my belief right now?
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: But just flash back to what I just said about
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: the Obama administration, being like, well, if we indict Julian Assange, right, yeah,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: we have to indict the journalists who publish that material.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: So now if Biden indicts Julian Assange, are they going
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: to indict the journalists who publish that material because we
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: are talking about the same administration that just disappeared in
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: ABC News.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: Pretty ser did it disappear him? He just vanished from
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: public life and lost his job and refuses to talk
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: to anybody about it.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like that episode of Black Mirror where you
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: get blocked, but you're he still alive. You just can't
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: see faces and they can't recognize you. He's still alive,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: but like is he?
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: That might happen of all of the Black Mirror things
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: that might happen.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that they just put contacts in
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: your eyes, but a little.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: Bit here something.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So around this same time though, twenty ten, twenty eleven,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: that is when the Sweden charges come up. Yeah, where
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: two separate charges rape and molestation are lodged against Julian
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Assange after a speaking trip to Sweden. And that's what
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: eventually compels him to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Not so much the WikiLeaks stuff, at least not at first. Yeah,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: because he was in London and it was going back
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: and forth in the courts, and the courts finally decided, yes,
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: you can be extradited to Sweden. That's when he holds
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: up in the Ecuadorian embassy. Imagine beingdor and just having
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: that fall into your lap, like all right, yeah man,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: why why you.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: Can only imagine the story now that we know the
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: stories of what he was doing in Ecuador, we could
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: only imagine the stories that they had heard before he
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: got there, of like him in fucking London or whatever.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Julian Assange has alleged that some of the crazier stories
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: about his behavior in the embassy in Ecuador were embellished
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: at the best because Ecuador just wanted him out of there,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: And we'll get to why they wanted him out of there.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: They definitely wanted him out of there.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: Uh huh.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: That's not even me hinting that we're going to get
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: to Ecuador being not justified in wanting them out of there.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: They sure a shit should have wanted him out. It's
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: like his Julian Nossange got kicked out of the Ecuadorian
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: embassy for the same reason a lot of comedian's bomb
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: on stage. He failed to read the room exactly, he
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: did the wrong material in front of the wrong crowd.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: That's absolutely, absolutely.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Up to that Ecuador. Up to that point, Ecuador was
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: doing everything you would want them to do in a
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: case like this. Yeah, like they were following the fucking
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: law and Renaissans fucked it up.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well that's the thing. And that's the thing with
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: this stuff in Sweden where I'm like, obviously, when you've
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: got governments and shit coming after you, like any personal
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: shit is bound to get dragged up and thrown at you,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: and so like it doesn't matter if you could be
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: squeaky clean and with like one mistake and they'll find
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: it and they'll use it against you. But still, Julian,
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: if you're on the run from the gun, you should
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: know that they're gonna look for this stuff. So why
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: are you fucking it?
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, insane because all of the sexual assault charges are
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: from a speaking trip after he's already Yeah, like you're saying,
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: like on the run basically.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So that was June twenty twelve when he checked
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: into his room at the Ecuadorian embassy. He was there
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: for a long time, like they just like you can
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: see pictures and videos of his living quarters. They just
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: converted an office into like a studio apartment. And if
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: he did go crazy in there, I'm not surprised because.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he treated that Ecuadorian Embassy office like my high
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: school bedroom.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: He did doing fucking kickflips, Jesus slamming mountain dew. So
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: he checks in in June twenty twelve. For more than
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: three years after he entered the embassy, the Metropolitan Police
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: kept a twenty four hour in person guard around the
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: building on the off chance he might try to, I
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: don't know, sneak out for a scone or fish and
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: chips or something.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Okay, you're thinking it's to keep him in, not to
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: keep other people out.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: No, because he went to the embassy, and when he
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: did that, he was out on bail I think for
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: the rape charges. Sure, but either way, whatever he was
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: out on bail for he violated his bail by seeking
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: asylum at the embassy. That was the Metropolitan Police's argument.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: So they thought just because he checked into the Ecuadorian embassy,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: they should be able to arrest him because of that,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: And they eventually gave up on that and just installed
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: security cameras. Which this is London, where they're not twenty
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: five hundred security cameras pointed at this place already. Right,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: I've seen the TV shows. I know what's up. What
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: do you mean you installed security cameras, You turned one
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: of the dozens that were in the area toward that door.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: And there were some points where it seemed like things
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: were maybe gonna go his way, like when Obama pardoned
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Chelsea Manning. Sure, I think a lot of people thought, well,
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: it was Julian Assange next, and it's like they would
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: have announced Julian Assange first, right, he is definitely not next.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: And Obama did that on the way out in January
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. In April twenty seventeen, Jeff Sessions was like, no,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: we're still definitely trying to arrest that guy, don't you worry.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And by December of twenty seventeen, there were rumors that
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: unnamed US figures were planning to either kidnap or poison
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Julian Assange if it's carried on much longer. And at
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: first he did have a lot of support from Ecuador
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: and that probably had a lot to do with the UK.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: When he sought asylum in that embassy, the UK government
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: reached out to the government of Ecuador and was like, hey,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: you know, we have the right to come in there
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: and arrest him. Hunh. And they were like, do you
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: that sounds like a threat?
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you sure you want to try that?
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: And so for a long time Ecuador was like, man,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Julian Assange can stay as long as he wants.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, They gave.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Him citizenship and I think that was the next concern
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: in the UK was that, well, next they're going to
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: try and smuggle him out and get him to Ecuador
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: so he can just live there instead of fucking making
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: people clean up after his cat shit in the embassy
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: in London. It seems like what got him in trouble.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: And this is where him not reading the room comes up,
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: is when he started getting involved in the Kadalan separatist
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: movement in Spain.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: It's Twitter. People need to fucking stay off of Twitter.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he had been tweeting about it, and Spain was like, Uh, Ecuador,
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: get your boy you, Yeah, you need to. He's taking
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: shelter in your embassy. You gotta tell him to tone
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: this down or there's gonna be problems. And he did
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: not tone it down. Ecuador was just like, come on, bro,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: you gotta understand. Spain's not cool, like we.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Are again, Like Julian, put your goddamn phone away, Like
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: why are you're on the runt? You are hunted by
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: multiple superpowers, Like why are you fucking why are you tweeting? Brother?
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Come on, yeah, it.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Just I understand you still kind of have a job
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: to do.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: But Hinda.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: There were also stories that there were some countries that
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: were able to like kind of talk him out of
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: reporting on stuff, and it's like, oh, what was that about.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: But the Ecuadorian government can't get the same leeway. It
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: wasn't just that he got involved in that separatist movement,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: which made Spain obviously very angry, but even after all that,
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: at first Ecuador goes in and cuts his internet access
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: after he tweeted about that separatist movement. But eventually he
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: was able to like smooth things out enough to where
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: he got internet access again and was able to communicate
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: with the outside world, and it seemed like.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Equator for a week.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. He bought the groceries and then wiki leak's
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: reports on some scandal involving the president of Ecuador while
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Julian Assange is still living in the embassy, and at
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: that point Ecuador is like, dude, fuck you.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I would say, if you're going to compromise
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: your journalistic or whatever ethics in any case, it might
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: be to not anger the one country on Earth that
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: will put up with your crusty as.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They were going so hard in the paint for him. Yeah,
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: and he's like, I'm a journalist, and it's like, no,
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: you're really not. That's kind of why the US is
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: trying to extradite you.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, but also I mean yeah, like, but regardless,
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: you know, you're also a person and you're staying in
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: these in this country's goddamn place. You got it? What
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: do you expect? Man?
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: He also sued the Ecuadorian government while living inside the embassy,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: which was probably not a step in the right direction.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: This is one of those things. It always blows my
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: mind when people file loss. It's like this knowing it
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: means every detail of this story is going to come
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: out like there was Did you read about this QAnon
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: fuck who had just bought a fucking mansion with the
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: money he makes spouting QAnon shit on YouTube and QAnon,
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: of course very opposed to pedophilia and child sex trafficking,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: was accused of having a relationship with a fifteen year
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: old girl when he was twenty five, and instead of
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: instead of just being like, ah my bad, that's actually
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: why I hate child sex trafficking, he doubled down and
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: was like, she's a fucking liar and I'm gonna sue her.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: And they were like, oh, okay, interesting, sue us.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: And when he sued, all of these police records and
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: documents from that underage relationship became public and he had
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: to be like, oh, yeah, I did actually do that.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: Here's his tactical error. Okay, two tactical errors. And this
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: guy's defense of himself one like you said, could have
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: could have used it as an origin story. This is
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: why I'm after his ex trafficking exactly, which would also
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: another one which would also work for the right wing
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: libertarian chud market that he's trying to win over. He
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: could pull the feebophilia fig say like she you know,
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: age of consent blah blah blah blah blah. Like you know,
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: that's an easy pr play for that crowd. There are
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: a bunch of fucking creepy dinguses.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But instead he filed a lawsuit, and Julian Assange
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: filed a lawsuit against the Ecuadorian government, and that move
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: is where all the stories about Julian Assanje's behavior in
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: the embassy come from. The judge I think it's an
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: actual quote from his ruling was that your rights have
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: not been violated because the Ecuadorian embassy doesn't want to
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: clean up after your cat. Because that one of his arguments.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: They were like, fucking will you at least clean up
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: after your pets and he was like no, Julian Assange.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the smell of cap is.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I'll clean up cat shit. I report on corruption within
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: your government. So it wasn't going well there. No, it
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: was turning into an episode of fear Thy Roommate, which
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: is an investigation discovery show about roommates who eventually one
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: of the murders the other. Sure, I love it so much,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: it's so good. So this was late twenty eighteen, and
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: it's also weirdly the point where he starts getting a
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: lot of celebrity support, and most notably, I don't know
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: if most notably, but probably the weirdest. Pamela Anderson starts
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: showing up at the Ecuadorian embassy and cool publicly professing
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: her support for Julian Assange, and at one point she
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: reached out to the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison at
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: the time to urge him to protect Assange, and she
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: says she just got a quote smutty reply back, which
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: stands to reason from what I remember, Scott Morrison was
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: a piece of shit. And also, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: but you can't be a world leader and be named
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Scott like you. Your last name can be Scott, but
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: your first name can't be Scott.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: Come on, you know what, Yeah, I agree with you.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: It's just not it's not it's it's not a politician name.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: It's like a it's a sporting name. Go play sports.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: If it was Scottard, what Scotty campaign?
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Scotty does know Scott.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: I mean look, I think yes we should have Montgomery
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Scott of the USS Enterprise as a president anyway.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: That's sure, that's that's fine.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: Scott Morrison sucks ass Yeah.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: He was a piece of ship. And Pamela Anders issued
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: a statement about reaching out to Scott Morrison and his
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: reply here goes, rather than making lude suggestions about me,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: perhaps you should instead think about what you are going
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: to say to millions of Australians when one of their
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: own is marched in an orange jumpsuit to Guantanamo Bay
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: for publishing the truth. You can prevent this more like
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: damn Mala Anderson fucking get them.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah it's a good statement. I mean she has a point.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a solid quote and good for her.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Like I know, there were other celebrities kind of speaking
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: up for Julian Assange, but she was going for it.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, but also none of that helped.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: On April second, twenty nineteen, Ecuadorian President Lennon Moreno announced
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: that Assange had violated the terms of his asylum. On
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: April fourth, they invited Metropolitan Police inside the embassy to
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: arrest Julian Assange and of course to have a spot
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: of tea, because you can't invite someone in in England
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: and not have fucking tea again at spot of tea.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: I've seen the TV shows. So Julian Nossane has basically
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: been fighting extradition ever since, and that fight is still ongoing.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: There have been some interesting developments. For one thing, Olivia,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: are you sitting down?
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Should I be? I guess I can?
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: I just I don't know. Yeah, because we're both very
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: up and active when we record this, pacing around the room,
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: full of nervous energy, you know, just to get the
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: truth out there to the people. Absolutely, so here go,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: here goes I'm just gonna say it. In August twenty
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: twenty two, a group of journalists and lawyers sued the
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: CIA and Mike Pompeo, alleging that they were put under
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: surveillance by the CIA after visiting Julian Assange in the
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: Ecuadorian embassy. There's no way that's true.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: Right, Sorry, my jaw just hit the ground.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I can't. That doesn't sound like my CIA.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: No, that is not my CIA, not my America.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: I think I would sue the CIA if they didn't
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: start surveilling me after I visited Juliena Sange in the
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Ecuadorian embassy.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: I'm person too, I have feelings I.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: Deserved a deformation of character.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Oh you think I'm not a threat? Wait till this
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: podcast goes up. Yeah.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: The lawsuit was filed in a New York district court.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Claims the CIA had conversations recorded and data from phones
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: and computers copied. No word on whether Pamela Anderson is
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: part of the lawsuit, but it does include journalists Charles
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Glass and John Gets. This is a quote from Richard Roth,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: the lawyer representing the group. The United States Constitution shields
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: American citizens from US government overreach even when the activities
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: take place in a foreign embassy in a foreign country.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: And that's important because, as John Ramirez reminded us on
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: the episode about UFOs and the intelligence community, the CIA
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: does not absolutely spy on Americans.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: No, not ever, never once, except for these times.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Don't even suggest it. Yeah, except for all these times
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: that Americans showed up to talk to Julian Assange.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: Right, But that's not like indicative of a larger trend.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: No, No, this is an isolated this is an oopsie,
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: you know, right, Yeah.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: Well, whoops, sorry we left the microphones on or something.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: It's also important because, as Julian Assange's lawyers have rightly argued,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: how do you get a fair trial when the people
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: accusing you were also recording every conversation you had with
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: your lawyers? Yeah, like it's literally no longer possible for
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: him to have a fair trial.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Yep, that's true. The United States should give this up.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: This is a this is a fool's errand.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: And it really is gonna set such a bad precedent. Yeah,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: because I think that Obama administration policy still stands. If
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: you indict Julian Assange, who's next? Like what news outlets
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: broke this story?
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: Right, It's a snowball.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: And it's the kind of thing again, It's one of
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: those things where I know, if you're a hardcore Democrat
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: and you don't want to criticize Joe Biden, you're gonna
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: be content to just kind of let this happen without
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: saying much about it. Because Julian Assange is a shitty person,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: but also it sets a precedent that whoever wins in
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty four can build them.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, And if that's Trump or DeSantis, one of these
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: people who is very vocal about wanting to punish journalists,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: this is the shit they're going to point to when
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: they say they have the grounds to do it. And
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: that fucking Supreme Court we got in place right now
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: isn't going to say a goddamn thing about it.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: No, And there would not be a very like they're
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: just there wouldn't really be an argument against that, yeah,
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: other than a basic you know, moral ethical one like
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: but that doesn't work on fascists. But like from a
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: legal like this, it would set oppress to it like
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: this is it. We can't do that.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: And by not saying more about it, people are you know,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: you're kind of complicit in it because you you know,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: you get what you ask for a lot of times.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: It reminds me of the hot coffee lawsuit from the
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighties where that woman got third degree burns and
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: had to have skin grafts because McDonald's wanted their coffee
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: hot enough for truck drivers, and she was just made
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: a mockery of on Late Night talk shows for months
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: and months, probably years on end.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Years. I remember people in my life making jokes about
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: that case, and I definitely didn't hear it like at
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: the time, So yeah, I do have been years later.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: There's a documentary called Hot Coffee, And what's really great
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: about it is it covers that story, and what happened
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: around that story was all this demand for tort reform
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: so people couldn't file frivolous lawsuits and put these poor
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: innocent businesses out of operation forever, right, And so it
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: covers three other stories that are all the result of that,
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: and one of them these parents, their child was injured
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: during childbirth by like some just obvious negligence by this doctor.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: And because of all the tort reform laws we passed,
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: the financial award they could be given was capped at
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: like five million dollars, and they were like, that's cool,
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: We're gonna have to take care of this kid his
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: entire life. That five million will probably get us until
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: he's like five. But Coffee, it's like, this is kind
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: of the same thing. Like, we're gonna be really pissed
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: when Trump is literally locking up journalists in twenty twenty five,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: But it's gonna have a lot to do with us
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: not being that angry that Julian Assange got locked up
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three. Probably I doubt they'll get him
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: this month.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, right, no, they'll let him have Christmas.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We are nothing if not just right. This is
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: a god fearing nation. We will not deny Julian Assange
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: of his Christmas. There's no way. He's no way he's
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: not an atheist, right, there's no way Julian Assange.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's he must be an atheist guy. I
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: don't know, so I don't, but like just yeah, he
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: just reminds me so much of that era of internet atheism.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: So apparently the CIA thing, the way it worked when
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: people would show up to visit with Julian Assange, there
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: is this security contractor who was at the door and
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: made people turn over their electronic devices like it was yeh,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Dave Chappelle and John Mayer touring together and which fucking
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: both of you get over yourselves.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that just sounds like an extraordinarily unappealing show.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: No it happened, though. John Mayer and Dave Chappelle did
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: tour together at one point and did this like, yeah,
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: joint fucking thing, and we're like, no, I don't.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: I don't doubt that, but it sounds extremely unpleasant.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah I would. I would hate every minute of it.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Except John Mayer can shredd a guitar a little bit
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: better guitar player than people expect. No, no, he is.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: No, I know, I know that, I know all of
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: the guitar nerd shit about him being a good guitar player.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: I don't like his music, so it doesn't matter. He
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: plays bad music.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: So when they would hand their devices over this company
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: which was called Undercover Global SI, which come on, just
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: say CIA affiliated security. Yeah, I mean, just call yourself.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: The more generic, the more sinister the names, yea.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And these people are like, oh sure, I trust you,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Here take my device. And of course they just went
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: and copied the contents of these devices and sent all
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: of that to the CIA. According to the lawsuit.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: If they're not working for the CIA, they probably love
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: the CIA. Oh hell, get into fucking security and shit,
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: if you don't like fetishize law enforcement.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they work there because they failed the test that
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: gets you into the CIA.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: The psych tests.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: So the claims in that lawsuit kind of mirror the
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: media's reaction to the Assange case in general. In December
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, The Nation published in op ed by
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: John Nichols titled the prosecution of Julian Assange absolutely threatens
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: freedom of the press. And it absolutely does. And what
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: I found out in researching this is it turns out
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: the sticking point here is the US government's argument is
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: that Julian Assange is not a journalist, right, because if
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: he was, then what he did is it's like Watergate. Shit,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: it's just reporting. It's reporting on government corruption and you
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: cannot under the current constitution, you can't be prosecuted for that.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: That's not a crime. But the government's argument is, well,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: he's not a journalist.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: He's just a guy, just some guy.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: And the thing is, the Bill of Rights doesn't say that.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: The Bill of Rights isn't but we're only talking about journalists,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: like it doesn't reference journalists.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's freedom of the people who have a Bachelor
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: of Arts in journalism.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: From an accredited college.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: From an accredited college.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Right, none of this online.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: Bullshit with a three point zero.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Send us an essay, tell us about what groups you've
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: been involved in will decide.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: It's all in the Bill of Rights.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: But that is kind of the government's argument is, well,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: we get to decide who's a journalist, like yeah, and
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: it's like, no, you don't. That's not what the point
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: of the Bill of Rights was. It wasn't to protect
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: the profession of journalist. It was to protect the free
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: flow of information, as John Nichols puts it in his
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: op ed. So it's an absurd argument, but it's one
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: that if Julian Assange is extradited, where's it going to go.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: It's gonna go to the Supreme Court. And what is
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: this Supreme Court going to do when this case is
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: in front of them? I would argue it doesn't matter
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: if Biden is in office. It doesn't matter who's in office. Like,
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: they're gonna side with the authoritarian view of things.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Right, the court transcripts will just be sixty straight minutes
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: of laughter.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fucking doodles and shit. Yeah, Garfield drawings.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: I love this country.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this is oh really Yeah. The only US
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: politician who has really said anything of note about this
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: is US Representative Roe Khanna, a Democrat from California, who said,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: I oppose the criminal prosecution of Assannge. The prosecution of
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: as Songe will have a chilling impact on any journalist
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: who publishes information and is a violation of the First Amendment.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Assannge did many morally suspect things by failing to redact
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: the personal information civilians and putting them in harm's way,
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: and also coordinating the timing of his releases to wreak
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: havoc in the twenty sixteen election. But one can condemn
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Asanja's actions while not setting a precedent of criminalizing the
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: publication of material that challenges state power. End quote. And
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: there it fucking is well said, Like, it doesn't really
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: matter who this is happening to. This is actually a
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: very serious moment in American history. At least if it
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: goes that way, it will be looked back on as
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: very serious. Absolutely, and again, you know, separate the artists
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: from the art, right.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is just like Tar. It's basically the same
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: moral It's.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly like Tar. Right. I feel like this episode is
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: going to be in contention for all the same awards
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: that happens.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: Absolutely will be. I'm up for Best Actress. Yeah, no,
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, and Juliana Song is eventually going
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: to like end up composing music for Monster Hunter worlds.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: So not only is that one op ed writer at
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: the nation up in arms about this. The most recent
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: development happened just this past week.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: The list of.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Names opposing the extradition of Julian Assange just became a
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: whole lot more prominent. The editors and publishers of five
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: different media outlets, The New York Times, The Guardian, le Monde,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Der Spiegel, and El Paice published an open letter calling
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: for the United States government to end its extradition and
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: prosecution of Julian Assange. That's actually what got this story
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: back on my radar. I was scrolling through headlines and
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: saw that and was like, h hmm, that's big.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: It's especially interesting because this is, at the same time
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: a story that you would think mainstream media outlets like
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: The New York Times would be a little angrier about,
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: or would be a little more vocal about. But you're
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: not hearing a whole lot about it. It's mostly overseas press.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: And you'll notice that every other outlet that signed that
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: letter is from a different country, not the New York Times.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: But well, I mean, good on the New York Times
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: for doing this still.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: But like collectively, they are all from different countries, right,
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: and you know, like because the New York Times and
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: it's from America anyway. I was just including the New
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: York Times within what you were saying.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, but also it's the United States doing this,
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: so you well, you would prefer if I don't know,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: maybe the Washington Posts signed on the Wall Street Journal maybe,
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: you know, like that would also be pretty great.
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I no way the Wall Street Journal
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: is anything like that. No, And watching the Post maybe
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: we'll see.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: And yeah, it was again I brought up earlier the
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Obama administration didn't decide decided not to indict Julian Assange
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: on the grounds that they would also have to indict
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: the publishers of that material. And so it's easy to go, oh, yeah, Trump,
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: he's the authoritarian. He's bringing it back now. He wants
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: to indict Julian Assange, but so does Obama's VP, Like
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden is not scaling any of that Trump shit back.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: And when you couple that with that Obama administration quote,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: it's it's kind of easy math that Joe Biden does
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: kind of intend this to be a means of prosecuting
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: journalists for reporting on your errors, because it's not like
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: he doesn't have anything that people can report on, Like
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: the withdrawal of from Afghanistan was pretty fucking ugly. Granted
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: it's a thing we were begging Obama to just do,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: like it.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: Needed to happen the entire time.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it needed to happen. Really fucked it up, can
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: believe it.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: So you're saying the American Armed Forces fucked something up
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: in the Middle East.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: I know, Yes, it's called the Middle East. That's what
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: we fucked up in the Middle East.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Yea.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: So this isn't really a bright side. But there has
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: been a change of course within the Australian government also
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: because Julian Assange is Australian. He's an Australian citizen.
• 46:27
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: While Scott Morrison was convinced that this was a matter
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: for the US to worry about and no one else,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: current Prime Minister Anthony Albanize sees it differently. A few
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: days after that open letter was released, he said he'd
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: raised the issue of Assange with US representatives recently and
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: would continue to do so until the US government drops
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: the matter. He also acknowledged that the Assange case is
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: an issue of great interest to many Australians and of
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: interest to people across this chamber. And that's an important
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: statement because because Scott Morrison really did when asked, when
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: he was asked about this, he really did say that's
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: for the US to worry about.
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like he was just like, man, I want to
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: fuck Pamela Anderson or something like. Apparently that was his
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: go to and she asked him about it.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: So it is important that this Prime minister came out
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: and said that because yeah, at least he's concerned about
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: his citizens, because that's the thing. At the end of
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: the day. You're the prime minister, you have to at
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: least be like, well, yeah he's Australian, of course we care.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: We don't want him, right, But Scott Morrison was a
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: piece of shit.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like it's similar, you know, it's this
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: whole like coalition thing, like, especially with some right wing
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: asshole like Scott Morrison. And look, I don't know much
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: about Anthony Albanize. I don't know what his politics are particularly,
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: but like I'm sure Morrison was much more willing it
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: seems to suckle at the US.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: T Yeah, I don't know much about the current state
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: of Australian politics.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean neither.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: I'm sure they've really come around on immigration since I
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: last checked out.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: Oh sure, yeah, absolutely, I bet there's no racism in
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: Australian politics at all anymore.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of where the Julian Assan story is.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: We're still waiting to see if he's going to be extradited.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: It seems like kind of the global feeling on it
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: is that he should not be. Like, yes, that part
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: is also crossing some boundaries, just like the side that
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: wants to have him extradited and prosecuted. That crosses several
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: US government administrations, But there are all sorts of sectors
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: of the world outside of that that are calling for
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: the opposite, And I think it's a perfectly valid point.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: I do think this is kind of an important moment that, yeah,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: we got a hope goes our way.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, fingers crusted.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: The last part I want to talk about is uh
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: I mentioned it earlier, but the Chelsea Manning case. What
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: happened there is Chelsea Manning was dealing with WikiLeaks, but
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: also reached out to a hacker named Adrian Lamo. At
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: the time, and if you read the transcripts, it's like, hey,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: what would you think if I could tell you? Like
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: it was like the active locations of troops in the
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: Middle East and shit, And Adrian Lamo turned Chelsea Manning
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: in reported to the authorities.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: And what, dick, how can you call yourself a hacker? Well,
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: his shit like that argument.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: And I never really talked to him about this specifically,
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: but I do know his argument was that he legitimately
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: thought people were going to be killed if that information
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: was released in the way they wanted to release it.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: So he, I mean, I guess to put yourself in
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: his shoes. He kind of felt like, well, yeah, I'm
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: going to be an asshole if I report this, but
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: I'm also kind of an asshole if I don't.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: I guess, yeah.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: And I didn't know who Adrian Lamo was right, and
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: then he just kind of showed up as a fan
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: of my writing at Cracked. And what's weird is in
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, when almost no one was willing to say
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: they even thought Trump could win the Republican nomination, much
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: less win the presidency.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: You did, people didn't want to jinx it.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Well, I remember in twenty fifteen. Norm MacDonald was actually
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: one of the first people to come out in an
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: interview and was like, oh, this Trump's kind of like Hitler, right,
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: And people are like, okay, okay, the has Trump committed genocide?
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: And it's like it took Hitler a while to get there,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: you dip shits. But I remember seeing all the uproar
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: around that, and I was like, what are you talking about?
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: Of course Trump is like Hitler. And I wrote a
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Cracked article about it, and it got something like six
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: million page views. And this is like in the thick
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: of Trump announcing that he's gonna run and I wrote
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: this article and was like, of course Trump could win.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: After I wrote that article, which that's a lot of
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: people to read one article, a lot of people started
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: showing up in my life after that, And Adrian Lamo
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: was one of those people who just kind of befriended
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: me after that Cracked article out of the blue, like
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: I had never gotten because there's like people who were
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: fans of my work, but I like heard from them
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: before that, Like they showed up when I wasn't doing
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: political Like I've done political stuff for a long time,
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: but like that's when I like this my podcast and
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: my rite and got really political when Trump was run.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: And that's also when people like Adrian Lamo showed up
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: and it's like, dudes, you're being nice, and I get
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: I appreciate if you are a fan, I appreciate it.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: But also he turned a motherfucker into the government.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's tough.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting here like criticizing the government. So like, fortunately
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: we never really talked about anything that important because he
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: would always like he would want to like send you
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: an encryption key to be able to talk to him
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: on some strange platform, and it's like, don't trust that either, Sorry,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: He's like it needs to be more secure than like
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: signal or whatever, yeah, or WhatsApp.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like open the Global Undercover SI app on
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: your phone, the same people that you give your phone
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: to at the Ecuadorian embassy. And yeah, So I knew
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: that guy, and it was that's crazy. It was weird.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: And then he died in twenty nineteen in Wichita, Kansas,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: like three months before my first and only ever trip
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: to Wichita, Kansas, and like we didn't stay in touch
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: enough for me to know that he was going to
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Wichita apparently his family is from there, and I didn't
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: find out that he had died until months and months
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: and months later because it wasn't like a huge I
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: still don't really know how I found out. I think
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: like a fun tweet probably, but yeah, that's that's my
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: weird side note to the Julian Assan story. I knew
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Adrian Lamo. I mean, he seemed like a nice enough guy,
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: but sure, like, also, you can't like go infiltrate upstart
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: young political writers and be an asshole about it. The
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: government sent me here.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, tell me who you are, Yeah, follow me.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: On the signal. It's like you have signal already.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: It must be hard to build trust at a certain point.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would argue we never really built trust. Well,
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: sure we Facebook messaged and again he was nice, but
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: it was weird. It was Yeah, it was really of
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: all the people to have show up like having that guy.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: It's like our this this, this would be bad for
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: my reputation, right, what's happening here? But also rest in peace.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: They still don't know how he died. He died under
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: very mysterious conditions. He I think is younger than or
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: was younger than me, and I think his cause of
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: death was like natural causes, Like they just don't really know.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: They think he might have had a drug interaction with Kratum.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: But he he fell and his head fell into a
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: Sheeta saran wrap and it got tangled.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly natural. He took acid and got too hysterical
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: and jumped out a window. Oh man, the government, right.
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: Right, the government. We have fun.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: We love our gov.
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: We are fascists. The government, not us, I know, not us,
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: not you and me.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: Uh So, unless you have any questions about Adrian Lamo
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: or any final thoughts, Julie, I don't.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just kind of flabbergasses about that. I mean, it's
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: a crazy thing and it's crazy that he died. Other
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: than that, I don't really Yeah, I don't know.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was strange. It was very strange. Yeah. Do
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: we have anything to plug before we get out of here?
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: I think that's our episode, right, Yeah, yeah, don't arrest,
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: don't don't arrest Julian Assane.
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: No, Yeah, that fuck that sucks. I mean, or like
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: maybe like Sweden.
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: Should arrest for like the sexual assault stuff, but like
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: all this other stuff like whatever, but uh asra plugs, uh.
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: Going back are our Lost Rewatch podcast nearing the end
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: of season one, having a good time. Uh, I'm behind
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: the dying social media platform Twitter. I don't tweet very
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: often unless something insane happens, like I don't know, like
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: the sitting president breaking up a union strake.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: That did happen.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I didn't know about that until the day.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: And uh, other than that, nothing, no, no plugs.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: I would like to plug Adam Todd Brown dot substack
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: dot com where you can read my writings. Uh, if
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: you would follow me there, I would appreciate it. Also
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: follow me on Hive Social at Adam Todd Brown. That's
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Todd with one D trying it out, trying out the
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: Twitter alternative. I took the leap, tweeted about it, said
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: follow me on Hive Social, and a bunch of people
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: tweeted back and said the servers are down for maintenance
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: and that is a situation that lasted about two days,
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: So that tweet was pointless. Yeah, you know you can
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: follow me there now anyway, And uh, I think that's it.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: That's good enough. Let's get the fuck out of here.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Olivia say goodbye bye, goodbye, everybody. We love you. Also,
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: rest in peace. Christine McVie.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, rest in peace. People have a I'm trying to
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: disaster to be astray