Title: Revolutionary Change
Show: Revolutionary Change
Date: 2021-03-27
URL: https://youtu.be/nso3y9TFr9s
Duration: 61:00

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[00:00] okay so i see we have our our first two o'clock panel that is coming up and these are all people that i have spoken to um i actually have had the privilege of meeting medea twice in person it's a little bit like it's a little giddy for me like it's a little like it's a little starstruck i have to admit which you know um so for anybody who does not know our next panel is going to be medea benjamin john kiriakou and kevin gostola so medea benjamin is the co-founder of the women-led peace group code pink

[00:32] and the co-founder of the human rights group global exchange she is arguably one of the strongest figures on the anti-war left and has done on the ground activism for more than 40 years john kiriakou is a former cia officer former senior investigator for the senate forum foreign relations committee and he was responsible for blowing the whistle on torture in our military program and he actually had to pay a very heavy price for being uh speaking out against that and so he is also a huge hero

[01:04] and kevin gustola is um a journalist and managing editor of shadowproof he is known for his work on whistleblowers wikileaks national security and civil liberties and he is also hosts the show unauthorized disclosure with rania khalik who's coming on later so let me bring everybody on was that good katie great okay let's bring everybody on all right all right because i'm you know i'm working it here excellent hi all hey hey hi good to be with you oh i'm so

[01:37] glad you guys are here this is so good um arguably this is the panel where we're going to talk about treatment of whistleblowers i mean that's going to be like the key focus of this and um i know that katie what happened to you medea i don't don't reveal the fourth wall okay adjusting her thing so i shut it off until she was oh oh okay see all right i forget that you have control of this too and i'm like what's happening here okay okay okay then you did she's back all right so then you just do it um and i know that that katie who is infinitely more

[02:08] um experienced at moderating panels has come up with some seriously good stuff like to to do here okay yeah well yeah welcome to all of you i've had you um all on my shows uh either useful idiots or the katie helper show so really excited to have you um join uh in this discussion and it's true you all are heroes um you know medea for being this tireless um uh incredibly brave and prolific protester uh and oregon she

[02:39] still is by the way she's still always i actually bumped into medea in miami at uh caravan for um for cuban uh solidarity invented like the hands off cuba hands off venezuela i saw her at a car caravan recently yeah on my bicycle jen oh you did it on bike yeah every time badass i hope you're wearing a helmet no no no we need you you're being selfish we need you in the movement you cannot we're not going during that please yeah

[03:11] well anyway next time helmet please um and then kevin uh speaking of tireless totally you know one of the most consistently vocal people journalists to cover um assange and uh you really it's it's a kind of a sad state of affairs that you are so unique in that role you should be one of countless people who are covering this story consistently and of course i'm john kiryaku real hero and um the only person the only person to go to jail to be

[03:42] incarcerated over the cia torture program so again you should not be unique just like kevin should not be unique but you shouldn't be in there at all you shouldn't be one of many but there should be many people who were actually punished for torture but you were punished for revealing said torture um so i guess i think we could start out by talking uh about the let's start with you john if that's okay uh sure how you see yourself

[04:12] and how you see assange and what both of your cases reveal about the treatment of whistleblowers oh sure and also can you set up your story in case people don't know about it certainly and and before the hour's over remind me to say something about the effect of calls to members of congress i spent years on capitol hill and they really do have an effect oh well we can all do that i'm not even kidding we can do that now okay yeah i

[04:43] and the senate side the senate's a little tougher but in the house you know sometimes they jump too with just one phone call or one letter they're very responsive to constituents on the house side so by all means email call do whatever is easiest for you because they'll they'll respond and react to it on the senate side they have usually interns or young staff members who just collate all the calls and the emails coming in so if there

[05:14] is a number of uh communications coming in on an issue that will make its way to the senator so this is not a waste of time this actually works i would encourage everybody to call their their members okay we have both numbers we have both numbers the only difference is there was something different if john if you can remind me there was something different about the thing with the representatives that obviously you have to know who it is and they're so but we have all the numbers we have everything there

[05:45] and you can call 202-224-3121 which is the capitol hill operator and if you don't know your uh member the operator is trained to identify who that is and refer your call to the right office can you say that number again i'm just going to put it in yeah wait it's on our phone script you see it on our screen it's at the top of the script yeah but i just want to put it in the chat so they oh okay okay so 202 you bet it's 202 uh 224 3121

[06:18] great okay now we have it there okay excellent so uh my name is john kiriakou i'm a former cia officer and uh to make a very long story very short i uh blew the whistle on the cia's torture program in 2007 i was prosecuted by the obama administration in 2012 and facing 45 years in prison i ended up taking a deal that sent me to a federal prison for 23 months where where i had the fabulous support of

[13:06] is personalizing it number two and i'll say it again especially on the house side those members of congress jump when their constituents write letters because most people don't write letters or in today's situation emails but um most people don't take the five minutes to write and express an opinion so when they get an email or 10 or 100 on an issue they react to it i can't tell you how

[13:38] many times we would get a letter saying you know please co-sponsor hr12345 just because i'm asking you to and we would read it and say well what the heck is hr one two three four five okay yeah well if this constituent wants it sure we'll co-sponsor that and we would we'd co-sponsor it now on the senate side when i was working for john kerry in the senate foreign relations committee one call is not going to make a difference but 10 or 20 calls are going

[14:08] to make a difference at the very least it's going to push the issue onto his agenda and so imagine what a hundred calls could do or 500 calls i mean that's real activism right there yeah so let me just say that i just want to say that from anybody who it doesn't necessarily feel comfortable leaving a message but we have a longer form of our script that is also available that you also you could use the script as an email as well so if people do feel comfortable

[14:40] sending an email but they don't really feel comfortable calling please feel free to copy and paste um great and um medea i wanted to ask you as uh about your experience organizing and what you think can make a difference about um in trying to get people to pay attention to this story uh if you have any advice besides obviously the phone calls and emails that we're all going to do and in fact either during this segment or during a break we should do them jen and if any of you want to do them to

[15:12] show what it's like you can yeah well we'll yeah we don't need to put people on the spot just yet let's no i'm not putting them again i'm saying if they not now if anyone wants to do them just let us know in the chat or whatever and we'll give you the chance to do that but no pressure um yeah i mean i'm not asked medea to do that now but medea what i will ask you to do if you don't mind is share your organizing experience and any ideas you have for how to make sure that people do care about this and do demand that justice be served basically for uh

[15:43] julian well thank you for doing this because this is one of the great ways to get people to care about the issue and learn about the issue and it's great to be on with kevin and john um my um connection to julian assange is really through the information that he exposed and as an activist and i think in terms of getting people to get active in this there were hundreds of thousands if not millions of activists who protested

[16:14] against the iraq war they should recognize that it was thanks to julian assange that we learned so much about the horrific effect of that war when i first saw the collateral murder video i remember we played it we even um had it on on screen so we would go around to the homes of people in power and and project it um the uh files of not only iraq but afghanistan taught us so much about what our government was doing

[16:45] the uh guantanamo files i mean now there's still a a group that's been active all these years to try to close guantanamo they should also be part of this effort to free julian i think among the issues for which julian has gotten a bad rap it's ones among the liberal community and as you know it was the release of the information about uh hillary clinton in the dnc files and john podesta's files right before the election that really

[17:16] got him the uh the the the hatred um uh from a lot of uh democrats i think we have to explain to people that uh julian's job in the job of a good journalist is just to expose things the truth no matter what side is going to be hurt by it let's remember he also exposed um information about sarah palin he not only pissed off governments that were the around iraq and afghanistan but also

[17:47] around the arab world in general the corruption of the arab world that really helped to spark the arab spring he exposed the um scandals within the turkish government he exposed scandals in peru he exposed the um the issues in uh in iceland that led to a lot of shake-up within the government there um extrajudicial extrajudicial killing

[18:18] by the police in kenya when you are somebody and an organization that exposes all of these things you're going to make a lot of enemies along the way and that's what happened to julian assange and so i think it's important in terms of the low hanging fruit of people who should care about this is to get people even within the social justice movement to recognize that exposing the truth is something that helps us even if it

[18:48] exposes things about a group that we might be sympathetic towards or a government we might be sympathetic towards and i um think that in in terms of the kinds of things we have to do um well i've been involved around julian in a lot of the the uh protests that have been going on in england and it's really great to see how they have branched out and brought people in

[19:19] from the government like jeremy corbyn uh they've brought people in from the um the world of uh the artists and the um uh and the writers and uh they've really reached out into a lot of different sectors of society and i know we've done that for a certain extent here um there are people in the hollywood scene like oliver stone that have come out very strongly in favor of julian

[19:49] uh but i think there's more we could do in terms of getting influencers to uh speak out and uh then i agree with john you know it's a covid time so it's harder to get out on the streets and uh do the kind of protests we need to do which is why it's even more important during these times to uh do the calling and the emailing uh and the online kind of activists the tweeting and the instagrams and the tick tocks and everything we can do in the social

[20:20] media to get people to know and care about this issue so i just wanna you know say thank you for the kind of educational work you're doing with this uh almost day-long uh webinar and uh well it's not a webinar is it what do you what do you call it i'm calling it a it's a livestream telethon live stream telethon and i love that there's an action component to it and i will certainly do it during this time and i encourage everybody who's listening

[20:51] to not only absorb new information that you can help spread the word to other sectors that might not know enough about julian and might just have heard uh rachel maddow or uh somebody else that that you might um uh like as a a broadcast journalist trashing him um but uh you also have to uh put the the focus on our uh elected officials and i just wonder i don't know um who of our elected officials is there

[21:23] anybody in congress who's already come out openly in favor of releasing julian i have not seen anybody no uh the closest i've seen the closest i've seen is nina currently running she actually just put out something um supportive of julian assange and i actually would have probably told her not to do that but she she did a few days ago yeah um and that's the closest i've seen i haven't seen anybody sitting in congress that has spoken out in favor of julian assange and why would you have told me that that's nina turner for people now you

[21:56] know i would i would say once she's in she should let it all fly but i think right now the goal is just to get her in there and she's got a very short little span here between now and election day so just like sort of from a political perspective that's actually why i when i messaged her about this i um was very clear like i don't think this would be a good move for her i just i i think that not yet um yeah so that would just be you know just caution yeah i see what you mean but people who are already uh income exactly we should definitely be pushing them not only

[22:27] in what we write to them but but also really trying to get them to be public uh to put out some information some statements a tweet or something uh because if you compare all of the people in the uh british parliament in the labor party for example there are lots of them who have come out uh publicly and to compare that to the u.s where uh the our it's our government trying to extradite him and charging with so many uh different uh charges that it could be 175 years in

[22:59] prison i mean we should certainly be getting people and not just democrats libertarians you know certainly people like rand paul um yes uh we should be pushing them to come out and i was trying to we were jokingly kind of but trying to get um trump to own the libs before he got out of power by uh hurting it by uh pardoning assange what else we wanted him to wha what what is the ask for you john i'm sorry the legal yeah it was pardoned you know

[23:31] there's a little bit of a story even though you're yeah we had we had asked for assange snowden and me and um you know i hired a lobbyist and and i had some reach into the white house tucker carlson sort of adopted my cause and um i i really believed i was gonna get it i i actually believed for a little while that all three of us were gonna get it and then what i heard from a well-placed person at the white house is that it was mitch mcconnell that called over and said

[24:02] if you pardon these three you're going to lose the impeachment trial and so none of us got it well oh that mitch mcconnell always there with such a right hand such a helper he's yeah he gives a terrible name and does terrible pr for turtles by the way so uh i just want to say that not all turtles um and one other thing i would just want to point out is that if publishing this information were so treacherous then we really need to be going after the new york times the

[24:32] guardian everyone who reported on these stories because you know you have to be consistent and either it was not uh cautious not prudent to cover these things which i would of course disagree with but if that is the argument for why assange is such a you know a disreputable person um such a pariah then fine but also go after the places that publish this and um it's also incredibly infuriating that much like john you were the only person to

[25:02] go to jail over cia torture um we have not torturers just the first hand rose is the torture because that's logical no right that's what i'm saying he was the only right no but he didn't do it but i'm saying from the revelations about the torture the only person who was punished was the one who revealed it not the ones who engaged in it and um uh likewise you know their manning and assange helped bring to light the collateral murder video which again no one is talking about the fact that there was captured on video the um like

[25:35] really brutal um killing of uh civilians of members of the press of the people who try to help the people after i mean literally you have this on video they're trying to help the people who are shot and they decide to shoot those people too and they're they're animate you know they're narrating it in a way as if it's a video game and no one wasn't got in trouble for that except for the people who helped expose that um uh kevin wanted to ask you about what it's been like covering these stories

[26:05] and um why you think there's such a deafening silence around it well yeah so i i think that first let me say thank you to medea and john it's great to be able to be part of this panel and thank you for organizing this telethon event it's extremely crucial what we're doing here and just in general before i get to your question i wanted to throw out my own opinion about the the distinction between donald trump and barack obama i get a

[26:37] lot of pushback from people who seem to think that it's the same there's not really any difference and and in fact they'll point to the grand jury investigation uh and they'll say that that was opened against julian assange so donald trump charging julian assange is not that much different because they were investigating julian assange because there was this cloud of investigation that ultimately drove him to seek asylum from the ecuador government and i just would say that we have to be

[33:28] 99.99 record of being able to verify the authenticity of all the documents that they've ever filed on their website there's maybe only a handful of documents you can question and they didn't make any news headlines so they don't really matter and uh and you know that's that's his job and and so i think um it's up to us to do this work this this telethon is important because we're destigmatizing julian assange we're demystifying all of this our politicians the elites have made him

[34:00] out to be this boogeyman figure and then with our work which can be difficult we're gonna tear all that apart so that people can see the essence of what julian assange did and what wikileaks does and appreciate it again because they did they did before the elites got to it and then now um the the next generation of people only know julian assange based on how elites teach them about julian assange and wikileaks and it's up to us to unravel that can

[34:31] you actually since you brought this up and you said that we avoid the swedish um uh case to our detriment can you give a short a quick overview of what that is i find people still harp on that yeah i find that that he still gets referred to as in some sort of sexual predatory way even though that was a complete fabrication and that that has lingered and i think that they knew that would linger and i think that that's the one of those things that keeps the sort of liberals sort of anti-julian assange yeah or it's an

[35:02] excuse for them too but yeah kevin can you shed some light on that yeah and i i have a very um me too safe answer for how this you know this is what we should say this is this is the way it was they started and stopped the investigation into julian assange no less than three times no less than three times did the swedish prosecution authority open and close open and close and open and close

[35:33] the investigation and there technically weren't ever any charges issued against julian assange there were allegations that they were investigating they were told not to go to the ecuador embassy that the prosecutors were told they couldn't go to the ecuador embassy and question assange in the embassy under the treaty or agreements that uh that sweden has with the uk because the british

[36:05] government actually applied pressure to prevent the swedish prosecutors from coming to the uk to to have that they wouldn't allow for so then there was some conversation over whether they could do this virtually um with julian assange in the embassy we know a lot of these details thanks to journalist stefania moritzi who i know you talked to very useful idiots um and she's you know i mean i just want to give her quick credit on this show she's one of the only journalists i know

[36:35] who has had the guts to push freedom of information act requests against all the governments implicated in this entire scandal of of this case against julian assange but finally i would just say that if you care about the women that uh and whatever went on in in the bedroom you know that night with with julian assange if you if you care about that if you care about valuing their experiences and believe that you know again like

[37:07] let's just pretend like i don't know anything about who these women are and i know that there's been some some claims about whether you know one of them is compromised by the us government or not let's just pretend like let's set that aside let's pretend like these are just women who had a bad experience with julian assange if you want to value them then what the swedish prosecution authority did is the absolute wrong way to take care of people who are bringing sexual allegations because you are allowing it you're allowing a case to be

[37:38] politicized and manipulated by world governments you know for the purpose of keeping a publisher in limbo who has been exposing corruption by a powerful government and so i think that it's it's pretty simple it's it's pretty simple if you want to talk about this you raise the due process issues and you connect the due process violations to the due process violations that are existent right now

[38:09] in the extradition case and some of the other inequities that are existent in this case that have been that has been brought against julian assange yeah um and uh does anyone want it i mean i i guess i can do a phone call do you want me i have it set up better well i already did my calls people should see somebody do it well have you called your person called the department of justice because they've heard from me a couple of times

[38:39] right where's the script i'll do it hold on i'm putting it up i'm going to put it up um we just want to make sure people you know want to encourage people to also by the way sorry one more thing the story about the spying is incredible absolutely incredible and the fact that it hasn't been covered i mean i i brought up the fact that it was covered by you know spanish uh el pais because uh more understandably it's about a spanish company but they spied on assange and they

[39:10] even tried to um go through the guard they did they took out his children's um his son's diapers to try to do a dna test at that point they didn't know it was they were his children um and they are so stupid by the way that they think there's dna that you can do dna from stool but that's another issue but they did that can you i mean these are this is the level and it was such a disgusting invasion that that's what brought some of the

[39:40] people working for the spanish company to tell um correct me if i'm wrong uh kevin but i think it's she said this to us on useful idiots tell his partner stella morris that they actually came over they told her not to bring the kids anymore because they were doing that you know they were taking the samples from um their nappies i guess as as they say in the in different countries um their diapers and that is just a really repulsive thing and what's really scary about this is

[40:10] that despite the fact that this was revealed none of the mainstream reporters right the woman um ellen yeah ellen nakashima nakashima from her washington post her cell phone battery was taken they tried to take her cell phone battery from her and and we get no objection the washington post won't put out any press release standing up for their reporter yeah it's absolutely probably i mean it's disgusting um if medea you want to make this on speakerphone so everyone can hear it uh yes i i'm leaving my message now

[40:43] hello my name is medea benjamin and i'm calling from washington d.c to ask that the united states drop the case against julian assange i am very concerned about the ramifications that persecuting a journalist for exposing american war crimes will have on our civil liberties joe biden said that he would end trump's attacks on the press yet his administration has indicated it's going to continue to seek assange's extradition the prosecution of assange creates a dangerous precedent that will prevent journalists

[41:15] from holding our government accountable please protect our first amendment rights and drop this case against assange immediately thank you for your time bye-bye all right so i would just say that we should tell people which button to press when they um uh contact the comment line did you yeah i mean it was the one if it was the one if you want to make a comment on on civil liberties or constitutional issues i mean it you get

[41:45] two options in the beginning where they basically say this is an emergency call the fbi and um then there's the if you want to make a comment on issues regarding civil or constitutional rights um i think it's push one john yeah so you can do one or you can do the general comment line would be which would be nine so either okay uh that was great thank you for doing that and i'd have a shout out to john holder our producer who yeah option one who has really done an amazing job and put this together and um

[42:16] yeah and so everybody it is down in the description feel free to use it feel free to use it and convert it as an email yeah great great script john yeah and i gotta get the house gov that's how i find my uh congresspeople house.gov yeah and we are hearing from people that a lot of shockingly dianne feinstein's uh mailbox is full um and so was and mitch mcconnell so obviously obviously there's gonna be certain people that you're just not gonna be able to get through to uh and apparently joe biden um but i would just say honestly i think it's most

[42:47] important that we hound the department of justice at this point now that merrick garland is in there so i i think really that's the that's sort of the key one right now yeah yeah agreed and we should do some kind of a protest or a rally at the department of justice is there something planned well there was something that they there have been things going on this past week i don't know if kevin if you know anything about that they had some stuff going on in dc this past week um regarding assange a lot of the activists

[43:17] um were doing something on the street out there i think that somebody even put something about that i'm just loosely familiar that there was a st patrick's day timed event clovers yes and that's what it was and usually they would pick the you know the target would be to go to the justice department yeah but i agree i mean the more the merrier and is it the um assange defense dot org or um

[43:48] yeah uh that did the one it was the clovers was what it was that did this it was cl i even i put up that it got lost in the comments it was clovers for assange i believe as far as i know that wasn't an assange defense committee protest it was an another more loose uh more grassroots loosely knit group but uh uh but yeah the assassin's defense committee has organized rallies and yeah i do i do agree with medea that there there

[44:19] definitely should be something yeah well the nathan who we had on in the very beginning um his information and his organization um that stuff is available in our description and that's the organization that is pretty much on top of all things that are actions involving julian assange which is how we ended up getting their assistance with this so i would suggest that people go there um and check it out because they keep everything current whatever actions are going on for julian assange and i would also just say in case people don't know who their um

[44:50] rep is uh you can go to uh housegov dot uh house dot gov slash representative slash find you know what it's a little hard to yeah just type you can just type in there because uh and that and that way you'll actually get to see who your representative is and then you go to the other thing the the house.gov representatives and it's it's listed by either name or by state um but this is a way that you get it by

[45:21] um by your zip code so yeah i can i can do that um maybe one of us can do it per uh per per segment yeah i mean i i think that yeah i think that's good i gotta call chuck even though the senate i just want to call chuck schumer anyway i like to check in on him you like to talk you like to chat with chuck yeah yeah you know yeah ask him about that who his favorite um classmate is from that high school that he went to

[45:51] uh bernie went to uh rbg uh uh norman finkelstein anyway um but i digress yeah i mean it really is again it's a total stain can you imagine that they want the script back can someone bring back okay all right all right all right all right i got it all right mallory all right and also thank you mallory and also can you just imagine again that you were a washington post reporter who had your cell phone meddled with and you decide it's not worth raising your voice why do you guys think

[46:22] that is by the way oh i know the answer to that question because if they say something then people are going to accuse them of being assange supporters so like you're actually supposed to want to be the victim in this case like you're supposed to want to be targeted on behalf of the caa does did john media disagree no i don't disagree at all i hate to say hey you just want to martyr yourself you're supposed to marry yourself for this military industrial complex right well

[46:53] and look at the way look at the way intelligence reporting has changed over the years too where where once upon a time reporters tried to develop sources like you do kevin to you know give them information or confirm information on intelligence issues now we have the likes of kendallenian at nbc and msnbc who who got caught sending his articles to the cia for clearance before he sent them to his own editor i mean it's more efficient right it's more efficient sorry

[47:25] cut out the middleman exactly yeah you don't want to cost your editor to do that extra work it's good nice very considerate yeah i have a question for kevin well and and you jen well erin anybody might know um it does seem that some of these organizations for the protection of journalists have come around and been supporting julian that is that the case yeah yeah i can't think of a single press freedom organization that has not come out in support of julian assange

[47:56] now the problem i have with the committee to protect journalists which i wrote about was at the end of the year i want to say in 2019 so this would have been the same year that julian assange was arrested and mind you we're coming up just to be clear we are coming up on the two-year anniversary of him being tossed from the embassy but the the committee to protect journalists refused to list him as a jailed journalist in their end of year index of people around the world

[48:29] who are to be and then they knew that they were going to get a backlash so incredibly and this is why i wrote about it was they put up a blog post on their website explaining why they could not classify julian assange as a journalist but just to be clear ridiculous no matter how you view him he's paying dues to the international federation of journalists he's actually a union member of a journalist organization which in my book no matter what you think of a person

[49:00] that makes you a journalist automatically so there shouldn't be anything more but that being said you know uh he's not even a he's not even a u.s citizen so our metrics for how we recognize who does and does not have uh first amendment rights you know it's sort of like we need to have a global sense about all of this and the global sense is that everyone is entitled to this freedom of expression should have these protected rights and all these organizations have recognized that i

[49:30] would say you know if we want to look upward rather than punching downward the the people at reporters without borders and rebecca vincent have been truly remarkable in their advocacy for julian assange she's used her platform in the uk to to call attention some really important issues on the ground in the united kingdom as well as with the julian assange case and my other question is have we seen any kind of divisions within the

[50:02] you know the big papers like washington post in the and the new york times i remember seeing uh the very negative ones about julian but have there been positive ones as well yeah i don't i don't i don't think there's been a whole lot of reporting on the assange case beyond the immediate reporting on the arrest and you know so what's really sad to me is when i was logged in

[50:34] during the pandemic and mind you if you had just had some kind of awareness whether we're talking about the new york times all the way down to the intercept all you had to do was send in a request to the courts and you could get a media credential to cover this they would give you a login because of the pandemic i feel like we should have had greater access and did have greater access to the extradition trial and there's really no excuse for any journalist or media organization to not be covered

[51:04] because you didn't have to spend resources and money to travel to london from the united states in order to cover the extradition trial but there really were mostly european journalists some people from other parts of the world and a limited a highly limited number of u.s journalists that were in there following the extradition trial me being one of the only ones waking up every morning at 3 a.m to follow the extradition trial from the united states and i just i i think they did the bare minimum most of

[51:36] these media organizations have done the bare minimum and they need to come back to it now but somehow i feel the election of joe biden makes it harder for them to just to write about this case yeah of course because i think that you're talking about people with significant amounts of corporate donors and and those donors and their advertisers are not wanting anybody to speak out on behalf of julian assange they're just not they're they're just too they're they're too corporate owned

[52:07] and they just do not want this out there and i also think that the mainstream media is very threatened by people like julian assange and their numbers are increasingly going further and further down and they don't want independent media and people like julian assange exposing things um they're not doing it themselves mind you but they don't want anybody else to do it either yeah it's i mean it's really again i can't get over how shameful it is that this is not front page news i mean remember when the no one was covering barely anyone was

[52:39] covering the uh the ruling um the treatment of this has just been so incredibly biased um it's mostly been just ignoring the case and i do think again like you were saying kevin what people who who like obama you need to be pushing the obama um approach to this not the not the trump one and for people who like trump um there was something i was going to say oh for people who are republicans uh john the only person who advocated for you

[53:09] getting your pension am i correct there was one senator who advocated for that and that was john mccain right john mccain yes for you republicans out there got to follow that lead yeah so i got the liberals covered i got the mccain republicans and if you like trump you know okay he did at one point well yeah if you like trump just know that a son that assange is hated by hillary clinton and there's nothing that hillary clinton would dislike more

[53:39] than to see him freed so for everyone out there who doesn't like hillary clinton you definitely want assange to be freed but if you like hillary clinton like obama you definitely want uh him to be freed so that trump and pompeo are not the calling shots so you're everyone's covered katie the the ideological spectrum is not a straight line from left to right it's a circle and it meets at some point um that's why in the past year i was on the tucker

[54:11] carlson show nine times right he has a lot of wacky extremist ideas but on the issue of whistleblowing and the issue of julian assange and ed snowden he is right on and so this really is something that the left and the right can cooperate on we both want uh freedom of expression freedom of press transparency governmental accountability this is there's no reason that we can't all cooperate on this

[54:43] right and i would just add the broader demand in addition to julian assange has to be that we end these espionage act prosecutions against people that we saw under you know the trump administration and that we really saw escalate and pick up under barack obama and then also in this same vein we have a huge issue with people being stopped at the border u.s border with canada or mexico or just

[55:15] coming into airports we have a huge issue with journalists having their devices seized um and and people who are especially uh connected to um the kind of independent or alternate alternative journalism and that impacts upon wikileaks and this other stuff so so you know there are there is a agenda for freedom of the press that having these charges dropped against assange fits within and that's important right and everyone who believes in that i don't care where

[55:45] you you know i may not like what you have to say but i'll fight to the death to protect your right to to say it all of those principles there's really nothing controversial about about this it should be very straightforward um it's a you know it's freedom of press and uh everyone should be afraid of of and disturbed by the possibility of uh julian being kept um in prison and also you know this is not i don't his health is not great and um he's being exposed to covet and

[56:15] this really if this happened in another country the united states would be condemning this as a crime against humanity as an example of like a corrupt country oh we would use it as an excuse to we would use it as an excuse to send people we'd be sending troops in to help those poor people yeah yeah yeah so um any closing remarks from from people on the panel and thank you so much again for doing this no i just had another uh uh a thought or question about uh um trying to push

[56:46] eric holder to say something tweeting at him that's interesting ooh that's a cool he knew i mean he definitely had the wherewithal to know that this was not a good a good where to go forward like he knew that this was this was not good for all of us so um yeah that's a good idea i mean another idea is getting these people who were in the justice department who have left and there we know that there were a couple during trump's uh presidency who

[57:16] defected and did not want to be a part of this prosecution it was reported in the i think the washington post actually reported it that there was division over whether to bring charges against julian assange and so identifying those people getting them to speak matthew miller is someone whose name came up multiple times during the trial the extradition trial and he's the person who was on record for saying why the uh the the obama administration

[57:47] couldn't charge julian assange so getting him to speak might be something that could have some kind of influence over joe biden that's a person we don't know but joe biden certainly knows and merrick garland and the justice department uh the top high-ranking officials there are certainly going to pay attention and he was eric holder's uh chief spokesman so maybe he could even get us to hold her that would be called john you want to reach out and not you john john who's my producer who's in the in the comments

[58:23] john my producer who's listening um he's the person who sends out our information if you want to reach out to matthew miller that would be really cool and uh see what we can come up with oh well thank you guys so much and anything you want to make sure people know about that you're working on or yes please plug your stuff now this is about julian i'm happy to do this thanks for inviting me and uh i look forward to doing it again soon thank you guys so much i'll selfishly take you up on the offer and just quickly say please you guys are doing the work so

[58:54] that's about it oh yeah that's okay so i i run a newsletter on whistleblower stories uh covering whistleblower stories called the dissenter it's at dissenter.substance.com free available and this is where you can get all the latest updates on wikileaks and other whistleblower stories thank you okay we'll include that in the description can we add things we can add things in the description right yeah i'm the tech challenge okay we'll make sure to add everybody's stuff in our description and we have a a weekly gathering that john was recently on

[59:24] called codepink congress where we talk about issues and then we take the time out like we're doing today to actually call and send emails and that's at the website codepink.org codepinkcongress and we should do a whole event we get a couple hundred people on each week so we should do one on julian and have everybody do what we're doing today so thanks for the idea absolutely anything and truthfully media since you're local basically to me anytime you call i'll come so whatever whatever it is wonderful or

[59:56] even different states she well no she's down here or medivh's in miami i'm in dc right now i'm back and forth but uh i'll be there with you jen on the next caravan on march 28th oh that's i know why you're there media it's to harass um your victim um you know who you are i i also like to harass marco rubio i know where he lives right but unlike um but rubio did not accuse you of something that you clearly

[1:00:28] didn't do assault another story yeah for anybody who's ever seen medea in person and meant to think that somebody could believe like physical assault yeah it's really crazy incredibly violent six foot plus woman yeah well thank you so much for having us on you guys yes thank you guys so much really i appreciate that thank you bye thanks for watching if you want to support our mission to transform politics into service please like this video subscribe follow

[1:01:01] us on social media and consider joining our patreon where you'll get early access to our interviews as well as other exclusive content links are in the description peace out you
