Julian Assange's wife Stella talks about her husband's recent visit to the British Embassy in London, and the impact it had on the campaign for his release. She also talks about the importance of the global campaign to free her husband, and how she and her family support his fight for freedom. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsorships/StayFree with Russell Brand and use the promo code: "WAKEUP" to receive 10% off "RUMBLE" when you enter the discount code: FREEDOM10 when you sign up to our newsletter. To find out more about our sponsorships and how you can help support StayFree, visit bit.ly/support-stayfree and click the link below. If it's within your means, please press the red button and become an Awakened Wonder to support us. We need your support now more than ever, but if it's not, you stay with us, you'll be missing out on some amazing stuff! If you're watching us anywhere else, we're going to be exclusively available on Rumble now, click here. And if you're not, press the link in your description so click here to become an Awakening Wonder. We appreciate your loyalty, your loyalty and fealty, your ability to see past deception and towards truth. - how we appreciate you, your love, your devotion, your commitment to truth, your support, your dedication to truth and your awareness of truth and justice, you're a beacon of freedom, you are more than enough to make the world a better place than you deserve it! - Russell Brand, thank you, awakening wonder. Stay free, wake me up, woke me up! Love, - your attention, your consciousness and your life is more important to us than you than your money, let me know what you're listening to us. - your support is more than you realise that you're waking up, wake up, awakening, and you'll become an awakening wonder? - let me help us all of us, wake us up, awakened wonder, let us become an awakened wonder? - thank you. xoxo, - Rachaela. xx - Raffy & Stella, Rachit & Sam, . - Pravin & Sarah xx - P. xx - Sarah - R.A.
00:01:53.000I mean, you know, we only get two visits a week, so we have to... That's all I get and the kids get with Julian.
00:02:03.000Sometimes I'm traveling, so sometimes he's able to also see friends while I'm away or when I'm here.
00:02:09.000And this time he was able to see Roger Waters, who of course has been an incredible advocate for Julian.
00:02:15.000He has a free Julian Assange massive image as part of his show that he's been touring around the world with.
00:02:24.000And of course also Yanis Varoufakis, who was the former minister of economy for Greece and a global commentator and an old friend of Julian's.
00:02:36.000He would visit Julian in the embassy regularly, so it was really nice for Julian to see his old friend Yanis And his new friend, Roger, who he had never met in person, but of course knows all the advocacy and amazing support that Roger has been giving Julian over the past few years.
00:02:57.000I understand that there is some more optimism around the campaign for Julian, in particular because of the 60 Australian MPs that have urged the US to release Julian.
00:03:07.000Does this feel like Public opinion and even significant political support is beginning to increase?
00:03:16.000What Julian has is a global campaign the likes of which we have never seen before.
00:03:22.000Every single day there is some action somewhere around the world, from Sri Lanka to the UN General Assembly.
00:03:32.000The UN General Assembly, I bring it up because Lula, the president of Brazil, had his address to the General Assembly.
00:03:42.000This is the meeting that takes place every year in September, where all the heads of state of the world come together to New York, to the UN building, and then they speak, they give an address, and Lula was one of the first ones to speak and he brought Julian up in his speech and what happened there was a completely rare for the UN General Assembly which was that there was a spontaneous
00:04:09.000Applause in the hall and that's because Julian's case is so important and symbolic of our times of an abuse of the legal system and abuse a geopolitical kind of show of force in which the person who has exposed the most the the excesses of the global Superpowers in situations of war, interfering in the legal systems of not only their small states, but also their big allies like Germany and Italy and Spain.
00:04:49.000So Julian has had such an important role in exposing the true kind of anatomy of power globally.
00:04:56.000That this has become a reference point for our times and is of geopolitical importance.
00:05:03.000So you have that kind of big picture political significance of the case, you have the legal significance of the case where you have all the major human rights groups, all the major press freedom groups who are saying this is an aberration, this case is the biggest threat to press freedom globally, not only because it's an attack on the First Amendment in the United States, It's the first time the Espionage Act is being used against a publisher.
00:05:28.000It will be able to be used against the rest of the press, not just the press, you know, not just the ones with the press credentials, but anyone else, really, who dares publish true information about criminality, about the most powerful people in the country, in the United States.
00:05:45.000But then you have a different dimension, which is that Julian is Australian.
00:05:50.000And he wasn't even in the United States, right?
00:05:52.000So the US is using its espionage laws extraterritorially to apply to the rest of the world, to basically muzzle the rest of the world, to restrict freedom of speech in the rest of the world, in other countries, in the UK where he was, in Europe where he was publishing from, and so on.
00:06:12.000And then you have another aspect which has developed over the last 10, 12, 13 years, Which is the surveillance on the internet and the means through which they can actually censor speech.
00:06:26.000And we've seen this, of course, in the last four or five years, where social media companies have been instrumental in interfering with people's ability to emit, transmit their voice online.
00:06:45.000And so that has come about because the tools with which speech can be suppressed are proliferating.
00:06:55.000There is not just a market for censorship, there's also a market for tools to censor.
00:07:03.000And this is so tempting for the powerful.
00:07:13.000If the tools exist, of course they will be deployed.
00:07:16.000And at the same time, there's a weakening of the protections, of free speech protections, of human rights in general, of citizenship rights in general.
00:07:31.000And so you have this, on the one hand, states and corporations having greater means of coercion, And at the same time, citizens becoming less and less able to resist, less and less able to speak out, less and less able to push back.
00:07:52.000So Julian's case exists in this greater context.
00:07:56.000And I think the whole world knows the significance and how Julian's case connects with all these issues.
00:08:04.000One of the other shifts that appears to have taken place within the framework of Julian's incarceration is that authoritarianism has peculiarly drifted and acquired a new aesthetic Just prior to our conversation we were talking about events in Canada and their ability to imprison individuals on the basis of protest, their new online bills that of course as you've just outlined permit censorship.
00:08:41.000We've been talking about how comparable bills have been introduced in the UK and indeed across the world and a significant part of Julian's revelations detailed where we were Gosh, 20 years ago or whenever it was that those revelations were made and of course as you've explained the situation has gotten worse and the power to censor control and the desire to legitimize authoritarian control has increased since then.
00:09:05.000One of the things that I continue to be surprised by Stella is the posture of liberalism whilst endorsing and practicing tyranny.
00:09:18.000Do you think that there was something pivotal in Julian's revelations around, for example, Hillary Clinton emails and other revelations about the Democrat party that have somehow contributed to this extraordinary shift where parties that present themselves as liberal, pro-minority, pro-protecting vulnerable people are oddly the most willing to shut down dissenting voices?
00:10:02.000I think one could say during the Cold War, you had the virtue of liberalism kind of held against, one could say, the virtues of the other bloc.
00:10:14.000So the other bloc was talking about social and economic rights.
00:10:18.000It also had obviously a very dark side to it.
00:10:22.000And then the West upheld civil liberties, freedom of speech, etc.
00:10:31.000What has happened since is that freedom of speech over time, as the internet has become a generalized means of communications globally, freedom of speech has been recast as a danger.
00:10:47.000Information has been cast as a threat.
00:11:09.000self-definition that privileges civil liberties and this self-image of freedom of conscience and freedom of speech to where we are now.
00:11:20.000Well, they've kind of instrumentalized this sense of protection, of safety, and of determining areas in which they, as the The paternal figure will come and look after us, the poor public that cannot discern what they should know or what they should say and so on, because you don't know what the consequences might be.
00:11:57.000It is just the temptation of authoritarianism has been too strong.
00:12:02.000The means through which they can exert authoritarianism have become so available that they keep on keeping up this rhetoric, this liberal rhetoric, But don't believe in it, and don't practice it, and don't set any expectation of practicing it, because the excessive force through which people
00:12:31.000Governments have used their powers to shut down freedom of speech over the last five years have become really obvious to everyone.
00:12:39.000And so, for example, you know, the people who donated to the Canadian truckers now understand that they are in a different world where even their what used to be protected expression of freedom of speech to support whatever cause they wish to support has been shut down and there are consequences for you personally as a result of that and you know who knows what kind of list they've been put on through the banks and the banks are now a
00:13:27.000It seems that while still maintaining the guise of the values that you rightly pointed out preceded, particularly in opposition to a sort of a Cold War opponent where the authoritarianism and the Stasi and the KGB and the Executions and the poisoned umbrellas were all sort of very lurid and vivid and Cold War and Ian LaFrennais.
00:13:55.000It was all sort of very pronounced and clear and it appears now that we've drifted into a point sort of, in particular it seems to me Stella, I know you've been observing this more closely than I have, but in the last couple of years, five years, ten years, you're much more likely to get support for actual liberty, whether that's freedom of speech, freedom
00:14:14.000to publish, freedom of press, and principles like judiciary and the assumption of innocence
00:14:19.000until proven guilty. Those kind of principles are being discarded
00:14:23.000curiously in the name of this parentalism that you've just described. And have you found that you're more likely to
00:14:29.000get allies that are on what you might once have regarded as the
00:14:33.000conservative right or Or do you think that part of what's happening is that those labels and models are starting to break down?
00:14:40.000Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, publicly said he would free Julian, obviously.
00:14:45.000And I wonder if you feel that There's now a shift where the authoritarian and more tyrannical and censorial and incarcerating and espionage act utilizing government are the ones that present themselves as like the friendly face of progress.
00:15:04.000Well, I find that Julian has allies across the spectrum, and I think that's partly because the attack against him is so outrageous that the only people you really find defending his incarceration, his extradition, are somehow implicated in the crimes and corruption that he exposed.
00:15:33.000You know, be it I study them on Twitter and so on.
00:15:39.000You get this person who says something outrageous about him remaining in prison, and they're usually in Virginia or used to work in Guantanamo Bay as a prison guard.
00:15:55.000But it's rare to find people nowadays saying that Julian's imprisonment is is okay.
00:16:04.000And that's a good development and I think we've made fairly good progress in the mainstream for that to happen.
00:16:15.000But I think there's something else going on here as well, which is that In the very center, you have a very constrained position.
00:16:29.000There's no free thinking, it's more about associations, what is the right position to take.
00:16:37.000That's why the major parties are virtually indistinguishable, because there is no expression within the system for for opposition.
00:16:51.000And that is negative in a way, but it also means that outside of the center, there is a dynamic and interesting development where people from different sides of politics, you know, have different views on the role of the state and immigration and all sorts of things also come to agree about a few things.
00:17:16.000And I think the central one there that I hope everyone can converge on is freedom of speech.
00:17:26.000Freedom of speech is really kind of the central pillar for a democracy.
00:17:33.000And if you start undermining freedom of speech, then all the other rights you have basically melt away.
00:17:44.000And so I think there is a growing awareness that freedom of speech is the one in which we need to agree in order to progress as a society.
00:17:58.000And of course, Julian has been a freedom of speech advocate for decades, and the whole WikiLeaks project is about not just the integrity of the historical record and, you know, the ability to put evidence of wrongdoing onto the public record, but also of the ability to transmit information.
00:18:24.000And if you look at the United Nations declaration, the UN declaration, sorry, If you look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was formulated in 1948, it's kind of the basic document to which the international order was formed after the Second World War, so there was a lot of
00:18:54.000I find it to be a very virtuous document and article 19 talks about freedom of speech and it is the freedom to seek receive and transmit information regardless of means and across frontiers and this is such a revolutionary this is such a An amazing article when you think about it, if it were actually able to be preserved and enforced, which is obviously what we're trying to do through Julian's case.
00:19:29.000This is something that everyone signed up to, to seek, receive and transmit information.
00:19:37.000Across frontiers and through whichever means.
00:19:40.000And that is what is being attacked right now.
00:19:45.000Because if people are able to speak to each other, then a lot... If information is free, then power is challenged.
00:20:04.000Stella though, what I'm experiencing, and I don't know if this is because of the kind of cultural space that I'm occupying, I don't believe it is, because what I think is that I have consistently remained anti-authoritarian and once was associated with the left in a conventional way, in the way that, broadly speaking, any celebrity or public figure has that kind of champagne socialist veneer or air about them.
00:20:31.000Although Personally and actually my background had always included activism and because of being a drug addict had always meant that I'd lived on the margins both economically and indeed criminally due to the sort of status of controlled substances.
00:20:51.000What I feel is happening though now is that free speech has become a right-wing talking point.
00:20:59.000That many, for example Canada, but also the United States and also Australia and also the United Kingdom, are introducing bills that control, limit, curb, dilute free speech under the auspices of misinformation and disinformation.
00:21:16.000I don't see the same appetite to do that on the right.
00:21:19.000I don't know why this point of difference has emerged or occurred, but there are times when I think that it is particular To Julian Assange, in fact, specifically because of revelations around the Clinton emails, because of the discrediting of the Democrat Party.
00:21:40.000I feel that this issue is a sort of a centerpiece within that.
00:21:46.000And I believe, and I'm obviously in the case of Julian Assange bears this out, that if Your free speech is a challenge to the establishment.
00:21:59.000They will find a way to delegitimize your free speech by saying that you are a particular case where free speech shouldn't apply because of some egregious act or some crime or as in the case in Canada, oh well those truckers are Nazis and you can't give Nazis free speech so we're going to have to shut that down and close down their bank accounts.
00:22:21.000So whilst I acknowledge that support for Julian Assange and the atrocity of his imprisonment can come from across the board, I have a sense that when it comes to significant movement you're more likely, and this is a question not a statement, do you think it's more likely that a Republican president would pardon Julian Assange than a Democrat president?
00:22:45.000because I do think that's the case, even though of course Trump, who apparently considered releasing Julian,
00:22:54.000Well, look, the support for free speech at the political level is basically absent.
00:23:05.000And that's because, as I said, the means through which they can shut down, control, and control not only your speech, but the narrative is much more accessible now than it was years ago.
00:23:23.000And that is tempting, especially, not just tempting, but is basically required Because they have defined the information sphere as a threat model and there is no significant pushback in that respect and of course you have this whole NGO economy and researchers and think tanks and so on that have suddenly seen the enormous pot of money that is being made available through public funds and so on to be able to fight
00:24:02.000And so there's a huge constituency that is keeping this illusion alive.
00:24:12.000And then you have the people who just want to, who are not part of that.
00:24:18.000And it's There are a lot of interests.
00:24:24.000I mean, if right now maybe it's the right who is more sensitive to it, because they are being more censored, then it's just a matter of time before the others realize what kind of monster they have created.
00:24:41.000And so I don't think we're there yet where there is a general realization that we all have to converge on the principle of freedom of speech.
00:24:52.000But I hope that we can reach that point.
00:24:56.000And in terms of Julian receiving a pardon, I certainly hope that whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, they will come to their senses.
00:25:09.000Of course, the Obama administration decided not to even prosecute Julian because they said, he's a publisher, not a hacker.
00:25:16.000And if we do, then we're going to set a precedent that can be used against everyone else.
00:26:17.000As well as, I think, providing us a lens for how political categorisation is altered, particularly the categories of left and right, exposing how what we have is centralist authoritarianism and ultimately different degrees of neoliberalism.
00:26:36.000Another pivotal aspect of this case and the way that Julian is subsequently being handled, in my view, is the seismic change in the ability to communicate and
00:26:48.000control information. In a way, what Julian did was the first time, most pronounced and evident time
00:26:56.000that anybody demonstrated the ability to convey information differently and potentially
00:27:02.000and specifically, and I assume this is why the response has been so draconian and
00:27:08.000terrifying, show that enormous numbers of people could almost instantaneously deprive the
00:27:15.000establishment of credibility, withdraw their support for existing systems of government and for
00:27:22.000prevailing and previously unchallengeable modes of geopolitics, i.e. the ongoing military-industrial
00:27:30.000complex, the necessity for wars, the requirement therefore for unjust wars because the wars are not
00:27:36.000legitimate in the ways that are claimed, they are just economically necessary wars both for
00:28:01.000This is about preventing what could potentially happen if enough people were willing to dissent and disobey and tell the truth and communicate and form new alliances.
00:28:13.000It could be an end to these types of systems if people were well informed, If people understood that what lies behind clandestine documentation is not just information that would be harmful were it to fall into the hands of our enemies, but information that is harmful if it falls into the hands of the public.
00:28:32.000And that's why I believe that we see this case endure.
00:28:37.000And that is why, whether it's in the purported left or right, there are It's been very slow to have vocal, clear advocates come out.
00:29:03.000If you are willing to talk openly about systemic corruption, if you're willing to openly talk
00:29:09.000about how the media now does not hold the government to account, they simply convey
00:29:14.000the messaging of the state, you are going to get in some serious, serious trouble.
00:29:19.000And obviously what Julian Assange did was unprecedented as a result of available technology
00:29:24.000and his own personal moral position, as I've stated.
00:29:28.000And since then, there's not been anything that significant.
00:29:31.000And I think the reason is, is because the media works for the corporate state, both in terms of where they get their advertising dollars and ultimately where their interests converge.
00:29:41.000So in a way, there can be no more significant victory than the release of Julian.
00:29:51.000I think that's why the movement to free Julian is global and because it's tapped into a greater understanding of what his imprisonment actually means.
00:30:08.000It's a show of force where the killers have put the truth teller in prison and You know, have enormous resources to try to complexify and obscure that that's what's actually going on.
00:30:40.000It is putting him in the most kind of brutal and basic way of shutting him in a cell for years on end, silencing him and threatening to keep him in prison for the rest of his life.
00:31:02.000And I think the average person, when they see Julian's situation, they realize that they have a sense of natural justice and they understand that really it is Julian's political speech that is the reason why he is in prison.
00:31:24.000He is being silenced and censored because he made The world know about crimes and assassinations and torture that was not just committed but also impugned, ongoingly, to this day.
00:31:40.000Nothing has been done to put anyone in prison for the literal war crimes, assassinations of children, you know, of toddlers that are recorded in these publications and nothing has happened.
00:31:56.000There's always been a cover-up and as part of this cover-up they put Julian in prison so that he can no longer speak and so that he cannot continue to expose crimes and expose corruption.
00:32:12.000So it's a show of force, it's a show of brutality To send a message to everyone else that the powerful are untouchable.
00:32:24.000And if you try to do the right thing, you will be hounded.
00:32:54.000And the question was, what do you think will be your situation in 10 years time?
00:33:00.000And he says, well, it really doesn't depend on me.
00:33:02.000It depends on which way the world goes.
00:33:04.000If the world continues to, or if the world realizes to uphold If the trend is that transparency and holding governments and exposing corruption is a good thing, then I will be free and WikiLeaks' legacy will be upheld as an example.
00:33:34.000But if the world goes in the opposite direction, in a direction in which Control and surveillance and authoritarianism increases, then I will probably be in prison somewhere.
00:33:52.000And plainly that is the way that it's gone, obviously and demonstrably.
00:33:56.000And to my earlier point, that is why the political parties that previously were organised, at least rhetorically, around the language of civil liberties and the rights of the individual and the significance of free speech have shifted So enormously to authoritarianism, censorship, surveillance, alliance with global corporatism, geopolitical unipolar goals, the depleting of the capacity of other superpowers like Russia and China legitimizing as humanitarian resource-based and politically motivated wars, finding ever more sophist ways
00:34:40.000of legitimizing wars that are plainly about an agenda that's been present forever. One of Julian's
00:34:46.000quotes that I refer to a lot is the function of government is to funnel public money into
00:34:52.000private hands. Once you realize that the Afghanistan war is not about winning it,
00:34:55.000but prolonging it, you will understand it differently. And I think that's something
00:34:58.000you can apply almost beyond war and to almost every aspect of the relationship between the
00:35:05.000government, the public, the state and corporations. It's an interesting equation for understanding
00:35:34.000The one that I was actively involved in that was produced by Julian's brother, Gabriel Shipton, is called Issica.
00:35:46.000And it was just touring in Brazil and it's toured in the US and it's I think still on ITV in the UK.
00:35:56.000And there's a new documentary called The Trust Fall and it is being crowdfunded.
00:36:04.000I've seen I've seen parts of it and I think it's a very good explanation of Julian's case.
00:36:13.000It has very good interviews, it has a very heartbreaking animation of Julian in court and the kind of difficulties that were The kind of difficulties that he faced when he was in court.
00:36:30.000Of course, now he's not even allowed to go to court because he follows hearings from Belmarsh Prison.
00:36:37.000Maybe that will be different in the next hearing.
00:36:42.000But yes, it's called The Trust Fall and do watch the trailer for that and you get a good sense of what it's about.
00:36:49.000And then Julian is, of course, nearing what could be the final hearing here in the UK.
00:36:56.000It's really the end game for Julian, because the High Court just incredibly decided that it would not allow Julian permission to appeal.
00:37:05.000I mean, think about it, when you have all the major human rights organizations, press freedom organizations in the world Saying that this case is of the highest importance.
00:37:16.000It's a greatest threat to press freedom.
00:37:18.000It's absolutely outrageous news about Mike Pompeo ordering the CIA to draw up plans to kidnap and assassinate Julian.
00:37:28.000And then the High Court said, well, we are not going to grant him permission to.
00:37:33.000appeal to even present his arguments before the High Court.
00:37:38.000He has one final recourse which is he has gone to a panel of two judges to review the decision and there will be a public hearing.
00:37:49.000So the good news is that there will be a public hearing and we are calling on everyone Who can come to come on that day in front of the High Court, in front of the Royal Courts of Justice in central London.
00:38:02.000We're calling it Day X because we don't have a date for it yet.
00:38:06.000We're waiting for the court to actually announce it.
00:38:08.000But we expect it to be within a matter of weeks, really.
00:38:13.000And this is, you know, if you have never Actually come to a protest or support Julian but haven't expressed it.
00:38:23.000This is the moment to really express it by showing support for him on that day and to come in from the royal courts and I'll address the people who come as well and there will be press so it's important to show Julian's support.
00:39:11.000If you want access to additional content and if you want to support our channel and our voice as this movement gains momentum, as it becomes necessarily global, as we take a stand against authoritarianism, As we campaign to free, let's not let him become a martyr, but heroes like Julian Assange, then press the red button and become an awakened wonder and join us.
00:39:32.000We'll meditate together, we'll read together, we will be tight, and we will fight together.
00:39:38.000Like NotInMyName and FightTyranny, these are new members.
00:39:41.000Madison Taylor One joined us, Sarah Bear 2007, Bazia Kenton, Katie Cash.
00:39:45.000Thank you all very much for joining us.
00:39:47.000I'll see you again tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.