Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the fingered at FDR We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very very much I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked You've been took You've been hoodwinked These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as a fact He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them We be on CNN like say our names, been saying, saying three times The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world, then there's going to be an invasion All right, you guys, introducing Dr. Simon Floth He is an Australian analytical philosopher who's lectured in metaphysics and logic at the University of New England and is currently researching on religion He was an early contributor to WikiLeaks refining the vision and experimenting in collaborative analysis since 2004 various independent sites have featured his political articles Including at Antiwar.com.
We ran this one last week, Assange's Ecuadorian cave.
Welcome to the show.
How's it going, Simon?
I'm going very well.
Thank you very much for having me Very happy to have you here and very happy to have the opportunity the opportunity to have published this article here a very important piece about Julian Assange founder of WikiLeaks and his current predicament there As we know he's been locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in Great Britain there for how long now?
It's been six years since he's been under Detainment of one form or another actually no six years since he ended the embassy.
That's right It's been about eight years since it had some sort of detention so 2012 we ended the embassy and the anniversary of that was just a few days ago as I understand Mm-hmm and now So it's a bit complicated.
We all know what he's really doing.
There is hiding out from the USA but can you go back and explain a little bit about the Never quite charges in Sweden and the rest of this story here and what he's doing in there there was a media frenzy after it was presented in the Swedish newspapers that Julian Assange was wanted for sexual assault that was back in 2010 and curiously just after release of the Iraq war logs Apparently that was illegal the the newspaper released that it was leaked from the police and That's contrary to Swedish law.
They're not supposed to do that.
The police aren't supposed to do that, but somehow it happened What happened then the the case was was dropped almost as soon as that news came out anyway The the Swedish prosecutor once they got the report from the police said that there was nothing substantial in it and it was it was shut down and Some of it some of the details are lost just from my memory, but it's The main stuff still stands out pretty clearly that the case was taken up again by members of the political party That has a very strong feminist over times and the the charges were upgraded and the word rape was used at least in English and There were nonetheless Both of the women and one of them said explicitly in a report that I read in a paper that it wasn't rape and that she wasn't afraid of Julian he just has some issues with women and the other woman had Complained in the police reports, which you can see online that she'd been railroaded and she didn't want to accuse Julian of anything at all They just wanted to see what they could do With help from the police to get into take a test of sexually transmitted diseases Well, and now so this is pretty important right is is these two women they went to the police.
They basically just wanted You know they made a mountain out of a molehill in the first place in the middle of this guy being the most most wanted journalist on the face of the earth they decided that they were what mattered and because he had I guess decided to You know take a condom off in the middle of an act with one of them or something that They wanted to have the cops basically force him or ask him to take some kind of STD test They didn't even want him charged with sexual assault in the first place But the Swedish government at the behest really of the Americans and the Brits They trumped up the charges into a rape case.
Is that pretty much right?
That's exactly how I would say yeah, that's that's what happened there was nothing really no substance every time he tried to push a Detail on the issue to try and check and validate a claim.
It just just turned into nothing It was never pursued either.
He asked if he could go if he could go to UK because he wanted to do a presentation and they said sure if you go and He left and And then they raised the alarm and put out an arrest warrant just for the drama I suppose and then of course that we all know what happened the British police arrested him and He's been in detainment ever since Mm-hmm.
And so it was when he was out on bail He got in a cab and snuck over to the Ecuadorian Embassy and was able to Score asylum there.
I had forgot.
I did not realize it was six years ago In a long time and now so the case in Sweden is completely canceled and gone now, correct?
Yeah, I mean for years they were saying they wanted to question him, but they wouldn't come to England to question him They were demanding that he give himself up to the Brits and have the Brits transfer him over to Sweden in custody Just so they could question him.
Yeah there was There was always some nonsense about him being the reason site they were saying the reason he wasn't charged technically was that he had to be present in Sweden before they could press charges and this was a really obscure and incoherent point of semantics that That dragged out the case and They did actually say at one point that they were legally unable to go to to interviewing in the UK and That was complete nonsense.
It had been done before and not only that but they eventually did go and go and interview him in the UK and then eventually Once they finally did interview and it was very shortly after that that they dropped the charges.
Oh, okay So I didn't realize that they had actually gone through with it and and they finally did relent and give in and question him There at the embassy and then that was when and when was that that they finally did go and interview him.
I Don't have the day.
I do assume it was 2017 So sometime relatively recent there But so now the problem is for for the audience keeping up first of all, nobody's playing down actual sexual assault It's just that that's not what happened here, right?
This was a pretext and and as you said Simon the women both You know backed way down and backpedaled far from actual assault here but then So the thing is why is he still in the embassy if the Swedes have dropped the charges?
I guess the Brits still have a warrant out for him skipping bail But then there's Another real reason right and that is the Americans it seems like there's just no other way to analyze the situation there There's a warrant for skipping bail.
Like what's the significance of that?
The only reason that he he skipped bail was to see political asylum.
That's been absolutely validated The UN is is ruled that he's been Improperly detained and should be freed and Compensated because it was political, you know, there was a ballot he was under Political persecution from the u.s.
And there was a serious threat to him Even back then now, it's only worse and how it's much more obvious but the UK is It's it's almost as if they think they have some some face to lose or something and they're they're just doubling down on on the Stupidity of it.
Yeah.
Well, and so the thing about Julian Assange is he's not an American citizen or a US person and so I guess the theory that the government is using is that He doesn't count as a foreign and WikiLeaks doesn't count as a foreign news organization But it's an intelligence agency a non-state intelligence agency I think was was it Hayden or Clapper or one of these kooks called it and so then their idea is They want to prosecute Julian Assange for espionage for being a reporter for publishing leaks that are given to him He's not a espionage would be like breaking it and and leaking the documents himself, right?
He's a document receiver just like the New York Times and the Washington Post and the LA Times Publish, you know classified data daily That's leaked to them by government officials and yet and we do know this right from various post Stories in the Washington Post and others that they have in the past had a grand jury Investigating and trying to figure out how to pin a charge on this guy for journalism We really we do know from various reports that there has been a grand jury Impaneled in Washington DC to try to trump up an espionage charge against Assange for doing journalism, right?
I did hear you make the the point that there's a difference between somebody who goes and acquires information And somebody who publishes it and the New York Times like you said publish this information at least the Historical stuff going back to the Iraq war logs and and much else from Wicked Leaks it was actually Mike Pompeo who said the thing about foreign intelligence agency and And it's quite ironic coming from him he was actually Referring to Wicked Leaks rather positively during the election because he was a supporter of Trump and and So, you know you compare his tweets side-by-side.
He's you know, he's changed his tune along with his job and That's just it's just really tragic to see that kind of thing coming from the highest levels of power Yeah, and by the way, I mean When it comes to parsing the law here just to be clear about it.
The Americans have never Called a grand jury together to investigate and see about indicting any journalists from the London Times or the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail or the Australian or Any other foreign news agency their their theory of the case here is an obvious lie That WikiLeaks is not a journalistic organization, but it's some other thing but just because they say so When in fact the direct comparison to the major newspapers is readily available Look at who they work with who published the war logs the Guardian You know absolutely They just don't have a case.
It's you have to go to the most extreme lengths of The paranoia of Cold War hysteria to make any kind of case against Now here's the thing about Assange Well, there's a few things but One thing that the post and the Times don't do I mean they publish secrets all the time But they publish secrets that our government wants in the paper Mostly, I mean they have scoops from time to time But mostly the classified information that they present is like ooh The Houthis did something bad and that's why we have to help Saudi bomb them or something like that that to justify what it is They're doing here WikiLeaks is doing something that Pretty unprecedented at least going back for many years in publishing the the State Department cables and the Iraq and Afghan war logs The Guantanamo files all the rest of the Manning leak and then a lot of the other stuff that they've leaked about all different Countries, not just the United States.
They really go and show You know massive emails about all what's going on in Somalia or in Russia or with?
The American State Department or whatever and and they published it in a way For other journalists to do the work writing the stories and they're publishing the raw data, but so we can understand why To a State Department official.
This is a qualitative difference, right?
They're terrified when they see a massive leak like the Manning leak getting posted online like that They can't stand that and yet they really don't have an argument about a difference in substance only in quantity Really, right?
Yeah, I would say that that's true.
It's a matter of quantity It's it's also a new type of history you might say because You've got the original data You're not just getting a story with with little footnotes as to facts here and there.
You've got the Reality is just laid out there in front of you to research and That's a that's going to change the world.
I think You know, it's been Denied and dismissed as insignificant and irrelevant but that Entirely depends on ignoring it because everything that's So much as is constantly coming out of it from from ongoing research in all areas Well, and you know, there's this great manifesto that Assange wrote years ago And they might try to argue that this makes him something other than a journalist Although of course, you know, I don't buy that for a minute I wouldn't see the the follow all journalists have an agenda.
Most journalists agenda is Telling the people what the government wants us to think and know okay great and a lot of and then there are a lot of other Journalists who have other agendas like exposing those people in government who would tell us these are those lies But Assange made his agenda very clear He said that in the age of this Empire where so much that the government does is Illegal and therefore kept secret that by leaking secrets it forces government to React in in ways inside the bureaucracy with their insider threat programs and all these things He's actually trying to provoke and force government to clamp down on their secrets internally So hard that they actually become unable to carry out their conspiracies Because the information gets bottled up and it can't flow around inside the bureaucracies in a way to You know actually help them accomplish their goals And so more transparency less tyranny simple as that jam up the works by making them You know clamp down and be afraid of what might happen if the truth about what they're doing gets out Which sounds to me pretty much like what journalism is supposed to be right?
But isn't that basically what journalism is supposed to be anyway, he's just really crystallized it there, right oh Yeah, well, maybe he's done one up in in terms of jamming up the works but That's exactly right.
I think the Why it makes Wikileaks so important is that the media just doesn't do what it's meant to do.
It's It's like a fraud So the whole point of Wikileaks was to do something about the fact that you know, we get lied into a war by Iraq Regarding Iraq and most wars that have been Since and before that were all in the same lines It was just a bunch of lies and the journalist just went along with it The journalist sold it effectively by not being critical by not doing their job Yeah, I can't hear you.
Yeah there you are.
Yeah Okay, so So you're absolutely right and you know far too, right, it's just it's just tragic and what's worse is that When something comes along like Wikileaks and any initially had so much promise and there was a huge response from the media Like you said all those major papers publishing the contents of Wikileaks leaks And now they just turned on him Because I think they've realized that they have to make a decision where they're gonna follow his model the proper model oh, we're they're gonna follow the old model of being in bed with power and It tragically seems like they're They're sticking to their bad habits.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you though I mean, well, we did talk about how he's not a US person.
So that complicates it a little bit, but it seems like You know for American journalists to refuse to rally around The right of this man to publish this stuff.
They are really putting nails in their own coffin here I mean if there was ever a case of if they can do it to him, they can do it to you It's this and then who's supposed to stop them if the journalists won't without the First Amendment.
All we have is the second Yeah Yeah, you might have a point there Well, you absolutely have a point with with digging their own grave that I think it applies not just in the case of the u.s though because in all constitutions in the West at least in English-speaking world, it's the right to free expression is paramount and The UK journalists that I think have been the worst of all they've been the most cultivated a sport of snidery when it comes to Assange and They've got a lot to lose as well because if they're going to sit by and and Cheerlead the What's going on now with these?terrible abuse of his human rights and possibility of extra extradition If that goes ahead what's to stop any of them being extradited or basically coming under the same?oppression at home As part of the general, you know intelligence sharing and strategic and military alliance right well, and you know like you talked about with the Journalists betraying them there a lot of that is partisanship, right?
Because when the Manning leak came out It was during Obama years in 2010 there and yet it mostly reflected on George W Bush and his wars In Iraq and Afghanistan his State Department Hillary's too, but mostly things that had gone on you know earlier in the 21st century there and so Typical kind of center-left liberal reporters had no problem with that But then when he's publishing stuff that's hurting her highness who you know her worshipfulness who for some reason it was her turn and And a song was getting in the way of Hillary Clinton's coronation as dear leader Then that was intolerable and that makes him a Russian agent and that makes I guess Manning a Russian spy to Retroactively and God knows what and now they just absolutely hate his guts Yeah in a personal way right they've turned on a song personally They don't like him anymore because oh, he's he's with the right and he's with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump they say Yeah, I think that's absolutely accurate and the The whole problem with with all of this is that it comes down to such petty considerations and and like you say hatred and I think that that was clearly the case when it came to the The Drumming up of the the Swedish allegations because I think John quote John Pilger quoted the women against rape as saying that this was just a really cynical politicization and That you know that the whole idea of Of accusing Assange of rape on on such flimsy grounds was was really a demonstration of a Really Misogynistic attitude by by people who just want to go about a political persecution Yeah All right.
So now the problem here is To bury the lead a little bit it's not just that he's locked up in this embassy where as you say he was awarded asylum by the previous president of Ecuador but now he's being terribly mistreated by the current president.
They've shut off his internet access And shut him off, you know, basically completely to the world.
It's been more than two months now and So you cite here the Mandela rules I wonder what exactly are those and do they apply in this situation?
I guess you said that the UN has ruled that his You know staying in the embassy is a form of detention there that it's not just he's made the choice to hole up there that he's been forced to Well, he has the choice between keeping his asylum and And leaving and try to get some medical attention, which is an unreasonable choice That's being that choice has been forced on him by the the British government And now is medical attention an issue at issue here right now.
He needs some Seriously this year.
It's been an issue for a long time.
There's Some doctors had written in the Guardian about the fact that he needs This was going back years now.
He needed MRI a scan which can't get in the embassy obviously for his shoulder and Additionally, there's I've heard reports of dental issues and sight problems and an unrelenting cough He's basically he's stuck there and It's they're doing everything short of beating him up on a daily basis, basically to try and squeeze him out and And shut him down Well, that's not working, right?
I mean, he's not going to give in but they have been able to succeed in shutting off his access But so who's doing anything about it?
He's got to have a lawyer trying to help him here, right?
Oh Yeah, he's got a legal team on the case He was as I pointed out in the article visited by two Australian officials from the High Commission and Though almost nothing has been said about it.
His lawyer Jennifer Robinson did mention in a recent Just a couple of days ago in an interview that they had made a request for the Australian government to assist by Making a formal application.
I think it was to the to the British government to To receive an assurance that he won't be extradited to the u.s Yeah, which the Americans won't I mean, I guess the Brits won't promise that because they're in on it with the Americans They do want to extradite and that's exactly what they're trying to do, right?
Again, it's the Washington Post that's confirmed that they do have a grand jury or at least they did in panel a grand jury to Come up with charges against him Yeah, there's a lot to support.
I think it was actually stated by By an intelligent consultant group HP Gary that there was a sealed indictment already that goes back a long time It goes back several years now Now it's difficult to speak for for a government in the case of Britain in this case You know, I think There's definitely an element of that.
There's the alliance with the u.s.
There's the politicians I Would I would say that if the British people weren't so misled by such an intensely antipathetic British press then It would be hard to say what the disposition of the British people would be.
I think on the whole Just just from the fact that all he's doing is publishing information He's holding power to account.
That's the function of the press which the press isn't doing.
I Think there would be Also some general even even in this situation where he has little sympathy from the press and from the people who take it seriously the press that is Even in this situation.
It's such a major thing to extradite someone to a foreign country I think there's a chance that he would still win in the courts But Certainly, if the press climate was a little different He would be I think he would he would be in the clear And that the the government would provide the assurance even now I think there could be enough pressure to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to Even now I think there could be enough pressure Just with a bit more public awareness Enough pressure to baby make it make it happen.
He does actually get an assurance.
Mm-hmm Yeah, well, I mean, I like the way you put it in the article here.
You say well suppose he were Not really suppose he were not merely an Ecuadorian citizen, but which he is now, right?
He's been given asylum But what if he was born and raised in?
Ecuador Then you know, in other words forget Assange and his white hair and his James Bond villain role and whatever The way they portray it on TV, but let's just say he was Joe reporter from Ecuador How could anyone justify the way he's being treated put on house arrest for publishing things?
It's crazy It's illegal Yeah, it's it's only the fact that there's this Gigantic machine spinning a convoluted narrative around the events as they occur and And putting out such intense smear campaigns against him It's only that fact that distorts people's perception so much to be unable to see that kind of thing.
There's no difference between What Ecuador is doing now and just basically going into his house Putting him under house arrest cutting his internet connection not letting him have any visitors putting a guard outside him The only difference is that he's in an embassy, which is actually not any person's property It's a it's the property of the nation of Ecuador.
The officials who run that are responsible and have to give it a valid account for what they're doing and they have to treat him as As someone with with human rights as an asylee as a citizen and as a publisher because that's what he is Yeah It's just amazing denying him health care and all of this stuff and they don't really have another plan Do they the Americans and the Brits here and I guess the Ecuadorians now?deputized by them Their plan is the status quo from now, you know indefinitely or is there do you think there's another step?that they're planning to take here to figure out because this doesn't seem very tenable denying him health care and all that looks pretty Ugly in Western papers.
I mean if they'd ever publish it absolutely, I think I Think that the whole time they've just been going by the seat of their pants and Seeing how much they can get away with and frankly I think they've done amazingly well in getting away with things and it's it's it's blown my mind how far the press has been complicit in this and And what sort of state of derangement they've gotten themselves into to keep to allow this to keep going and the problem when you do that is that you get into you dig yourself deeper and deeper and deeper and there has to be as you say as you suggest there has to be a point where it all falls apart and Frankly I think it I Can't see any other Conclusion to the situation.
It just gets more and more insane Yeah, and I think probably right.
I think I think Julian is is a very tough nut to crack.
I don't think I Think he's paying a high price health-wise.
I think it's a very serious issues, but You know, it's gone two or three months now.
It's it's getting crazier every day I Think you'll outlast them.
All right.
Hang on just one second.
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We've been having some server problems But otherwise Scott Horton org is a great-looking new website as you can tell and if you want a good 2018 model website for your business or for whatever you're doing your opinions Check out expand designs comm the great Harley Abbott over there And if you go to expand designs comm slash Scott, you'll save 500 bucks Yeah, I hope so I mean When you talk about health problems and stuff sometimes those things take care of themselves and he won't be able to Withstand it and what it would have to submit at some point and I guess that's what they're banking on You know, I want to mention here.
I'm I'm From time to time reminded and I keep trying to remind myself That a great part of the audience of this show is quite young.
They were kids during Iraq war to Barely remember it at all if if at all and you know here it's Even from the Obama years.
We're living in the future.
We're halfway to through 2018 and the Manning leak was eight years ago so there are a lot of people listening who maybe don't really know much about this at all, but what Manning leaked and this is and there are a lot of other things put out by WikiLeaks about a lot of other countries as we talked about at the beginning, but The Afghan and Iraq war logs and the State Department cables were absolutely full of news stories I mean thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and just the State Department cables alone There's probably literally not, you know exaggerating for effects sake but literally there are thousands of Newspaper articles around the world that at least out in one paragraph say according to a State Department cable from 2008 blah blah and and fill in an important part of their story and that's if the story isn't completely based on some of the information in those documents and much of which makes our government look Absolutely horrible and all of which we have a right to see like how dare they even keep most of this stuff Secret from us in the first place, you know, they tried to say it was treason But none of it was top-secret stuff that revealed sources and methods and we're gonna get CIA spies Throats cut out in the field or anything like that, but it was all stuff about this is what your government really does and acts like how it acts in the world and And then we see what?
2016 what's the crime?
He's accused of doing making emails unadulterated Honest emails from the DNC and the Clinton campaign available for people to look at They're not saying that he lied or that he selectively leaked only things that made Hillary look bad or anything like that But we're just supposed to be angry and we're supposed to assume that they're right and believe them that the Russians are behind it all somehow anyway But their accusation is that this guy he helped whoever Show the American people what the Hillary Clinton campaign thinks of them and That's treason That's the worst thing he could have ever done was show people how things really work around here doing good journalism honest journalism That's what's got them.
So upset.
They don't even you know for people who are lacking in the background A lot of people maybe don't know about this, right?
He's not accused of actually hurting America He's accused of making the Empire look really bad yeah, yeah, that's it in a nutshell and What what people?
Generally miss in all of this is the most essential thing that we value our democracy We we pride ourselves on it.
We're willing to fight wars for it But what is how can democracy?
Be functional any sense if it's not founded on in informed voters If the voters aren't getting the information they need about what's really going on The democracy isn't worth anything because they're just voting in illusions.
They're getting cheated they're going along with lies and that's what the The media is sadly failing and that means that we're in that dystopic situation The only reason we're not upset about it Most of the time most people because I'm not aware of it and that's the difference that WikiLeaks makes it's devolved into journalism being like some kind of Partisan team sport and it used to be the case that People and journalists included and in particular were very skeptical of what went on In the intelligence community if that's the right word for it, I personally think that's a sanitizing Neologism intelligence community.
Yeah, but you know, we used to be suspicious of the CIA, you know, we used to But but not so much anymore It's like, you know, whatever official you can quote to back up your political point of view against the other party is Is valid and it is an authority to appeal to it.
Yeah, it's just not the way the world Should work Journalism is actually the foundation of Of a sane and safe society.
It's You know, the the politicians are supposed to be accountable to the public But that can only be through through adequate journalism Yeah, and not it's not this political Partisanship Yeah And back to Assange is there You know, you mentioned that this council from Australia came to investigate this kind of thing Does it look like there's any real movement or we're pretty much just stuck in wait-and-see mode here we're pretty much stuck in wait-and-see mode the The Australian government to date hasn't acted in any Any useful way whatsoever in all these years?
Yeah, which is not surprising, right?
Yeah, they've been approached before Perhaps is different now because the the swish allegations have gone.
There's really nothing at all behind this this insistence that he's That he has to face court for skipping bail That's just a Fig leaf that all this persecution is hanging off and I think there's a there's a chance that the the present Australian government may see that that is a Real situation they had to have to act on and do something about in you know in a Diplomatic way no doubt in a very quiet way if they do anything at all but Our current prime minister does actually have an interesting history I Don't have full knowledge a very deep knowledge of it, but he he was actually involved in a in a case called the spycatcher case when he was a lawyer and It did involve an interestingly analogous situation of somebody being Anyway, I won't I went to embarrass myself by going into much more detail about it, but certainly the the current prime minister has Has some grasp of the situation and John pillages A journalist is very supportive of the signs very closely had actually Spent quite some time and an interview with Malcolm Turnbull when he was the leader of the opposition as I recall At a time when Julian Assange was being basically abandoned by his Prime minister at the time which was Julia Gillard.
Mm-hmm.
So there's an interesting history here and There is some chance of an interesting and potentially Positive development, but we as I said in the end of the article, you know, you can't trust these people you can hope You can't trust these people you can hope and you can push and that's about it Yeah, certainly you can't trust him.
But that is interesting to know that dynamic though that when this guy was in the opposition You're saying I guess he was interviewed by Pilger but you seem to be implying he pretty much got a briefing by Pilger too and And has no excuse of ignorance here.
We know he knows better than all of this.
So what's he gonna do about it, right?
Absolutely Yeah, and that was also the case when the current foreign minister at the time when Julia Gillard was Prime Minister the foreign minister was Bob Carr and he had he expressed a point of view, but Prior to the situation blowing up He'd expressed a point of view that was quite sympathetic to Assange and very skeptical about the allegations and so on but in his role as the the foreign minister, he was very standoffish and Yeah, very frankly embarrassing and very unsupportive but You know politics is a strange game.
Sometimes things can change Pivot rather dramatically and this this situation is a dramatic situation and there's been a lot of changes recently There's a lot of pressure.
I think that there will only be increasing public attention and It's getting harder and harder to spin in the way that it's being spun in the in the Deceptive and misleading ways that it's been presented so far.
Yeah Well, you know, there's one hilarious thing about all this and that is Hillary Clinton hoisted on her own petard after Floating and I guess they she and her people would claim she was just joking, but that's even better to me About well, can't we just murder this guy so he's not a problem anymore And then so apparently this Assange fella took that personally and decided.
Oh, yeah lady on the margin There were a lot of different things about Hillary that made her lose but Assange publishing those emails sure didn't help So I hope he'd like took time to pat himself on the back for that because I don't know too many people who are happy Trump won but myself and a lot of other people were sure happy to see Hillary lose.
I can tell you that my concern with Hillary was was actually more focused on the her role in the Libyan war and Syrian war and Frankly if if if Vladimir Putin had something to do with the election, I could only consider that self-defense because she was She was rabid about And being confrontational towards Russia and about Trying to get a no-fly zone in Syria and things like that.
She was really escalating everything and she was a real danger I I had no personally, I was I was horrified about Trump for a long time and Prior to the election and I wrote a piece in the catapult about His endorsement of torture and things like that, but when it came down to the time the election I was really thinking that Hillary was worse in in terms of the geopolitical situation in and the wars and Trump had come out as the relative peace candidate So And that's really saying something about that.
Isn't that funny?
And this is a big part of why she lost right?
Here's a guy who says not only we're gonna kill them We're gonna kill their families and we're gonna torture him and even if torture doesn't work.
I don't care They deserve it.
Anyway, just as punishment and and he was the relative dove Compared to her highness who wanted to expand NATO in Eastern Europe and pick a fight with Russia Over Syria where she'd been involved in Supporting al-qaeda there in the first place when she was still the Secretary of State working with Petraeus on that.
So I Mean, yeah, you're right And that's and that is a big part of how he won his people thought that he was less worse on the foreign wars And and she ran up until the last minute on yeah No fly zone in Syria and had no idea how much everybody hated hearing that so Yeah Yeah, but yeah, I mean and she threw she did threaten to kill Assange that like hey guys, can't we just kill this guy?
He's not an American, right?
She was saying I maybe she joked about using a drone to do it but apparently she really meant that and apparently that stuck in Julian Assange's crawl a little bit Yeah, well I wouldn't blame him if it did absolutely but their policy is to publish what they get That's in the public interest that hasn't been published before so you know, there's all this accusation about him being biased and about About him just just having a vendetta against Hillary and that was the only reason why I published that stuff No that this stuff was published.
It was clearly in the public interest.
There's an election going on people need to know about the candidates Yeah, I did say hey leak me Trump's emails.
I'll publish them, too absolutely, and you know He had that information and he acted on it and he timed it for the for the greatest impact which makes sense That's what the leaking needs and and that that's something else Which is just just generally ignored these days the whole need for whistleblowing It's one thing that the press aren't doing their job.
But the other thing is that to get there they're really important information it has to come from the inside and That depends on The conscience of individuals because there's checks and balances don't work The way every institution is set up is to have checks and balances to protect itself John Kiriakou had an excellent session on the unity for J Vigil he's the the guy who who blowed the whistle most recently on CIA torture and He was saying that everybody he had any experience of this as blowing the whistle out through the internal channels Taken to their superiors, etc Everybody who tried that ended up marginalized or fired or in jail and He saw that and and realized well, I'm gonna have to go To the press.
I'm gonna have to get this published.
So he went to the intercept and They ended up licking well, they did a careless job which ended up getting him in jail by revealing his identity and that subsequently happened to another leaker reality winner at the intercept as well and John was adamant in the interview that WikiLeaks was Matthew Cole.
I don't think I don't think Cole was at the intercept when he screwed Kiriakou But it was the same reporter who later intercept got reality winner.
So pretty close I did.
Yeah, I did make a connection, but I had the wrong impression in that case It was the same reporter though.
So I mean you're 90% right?
Yeah, okay my apologies to the intercept a little bit because they did do reality winner and He's adamant the only the only place the only thing a whistle do it can a whistleblower can do Safely is to give the information to WikiLeaks Now when you think about it just just zoom back on the situation that he's just described because He's his guy at the CIA Massive institution Determining what goes on in America going around torturing people and he's saying the only thing we can do about a situation This bad is use this one institution WikiLeaks What does that say about the state of the world right and and and the state of journalism, you know what there's something we need leaked is the modern-day operation Mockingbird and get the Somewhere there's a manila envelope full of documents about control of the media in our time And anybody who's read about the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s?
It was actually Bernstein from Woodward and Bernstein who wrote a big piece I guess for Rolling Stone or something breaking the story about Mockingbird but William Colby said anyone of any importance in the media is controlled by the agency full stop, so And that was then and supposedly that's illegal, but that's why it's covert action so that they can get away with it So yeah, I mean, I I don't think we'd be very surprised actually to find out which of our TV stars take their orders straight from Langley, but Anyway on your other point too, though Edward Snowden who leaked the NSA documents he cited Thomas Tam and Thomas Drake and Bill Binney and the other I'm sorry.
I forget who I'm leaving out here.
I'm terrible for forgetting all of my NSA whistleblowers, but I'm sorry Just one Radek was one.
All right.
Yeah.
Well, she wasn't NSA.
But yeah, she was a famous whistleblower, too But yeah, and and on the on the William S. Lynn, I mean not William S. Lynn the John Walker Lynd case Will you miss Lynn be mad at me for that?
But uh, yeah, and so Snowden cited them and said look what happened, you know, he cited Thomas Drake I think specifically that here was an NSA whistleblower who tried to go through the channels and they completely nailed him and persecuted him They didn't say thank you so much for your constructive criticism You know So that that that was his reasoning and saying I had no choice But to just give this stuff to Gelman and Greenwald and and hit hit the road and get out of the country Yeah, and and look you don't have to You don't have to have a tinfoil hat on and see this as as all just direct oppression from the deep state Sadly it the most effective part of this You know, ironically People are talking a lot now with illest Russia gay stuff about Useful idiots that you know people that are acting in their own According to their own view of how things are going and they're just doing what they think is right But they're they're really helping the the enemy well Sadly, that's actually what's going on.
I think mainly amongst journalists It's not most of them at least aren't getting orders from Langley Most of them just are buying into what I call media virtual reality.
It's it's systematic illusion of Ignoring real investigative journalism and and the output of WikiLeaks for instance and just listening to what each other is saying and Confirmation bias basically Jonathan cook has an excellent article of this in counterpunch In the weekend edition, I think it's called how corporate I Yeah, how the corporate media something about their narrative yeah, we ran it at anti-war comm to okay How corporate media slave is to a world of illusions?
Yeah, and any he Emphasizes that look it's not it's not that some people claim to be able to see through everything and and unlike the Great unwashed masses of sheep who just believe everything at all.
That's that's not how it works What happens is that there is this virtual reality that the media?
Spin themselves in with narratives like a cocoon And that the reason why he knows that is that he's run up against it he's run up against the limits of it in in hard factual ways and That's what wakes people up is when something like that happens to them when when they know what the story is supposed to be and they know From some other reasons just how it really is That happened to me personally in during the Iraq war all the all the noise about Saddam having to give account of his weapons program He supplied a great volume of information and as soon as he did that I see Rumsfeld on TV Don Rumsfeld Just laugh at it.
Yeah Well, and I was a to this day they say well Saddam was pretending to have weapons of mass destruction to scare Iran.
Well, really cuz he gave up a 12,000 page 12,000 page dossier saying here is every I dotted in T crossed.
I got nothing.
I swear to God That's some pretension there, huh?
And then as you said, they just ignored it They just laughed about it and and so they didn't even have to deal with it Yeah, and and this is what really brought him to me that we live in in this virtual media virtual reality Because the function of the press is to hold that kind of crap to account if a politician's law laughs after saying After spending months saying look you got to do this You got to do this or we're going to go in there and nuclear and he does it it gives them the 12,000 pages Then they've got to take it seriously, right?
Guess not boy.
You know what?
I'm glad you remember 2002 the way I do because wasn't that something?
Yeah, so it sounds like the same thing happened to you, you know, we ran up against the limits of media virtual reality But you know my I really recommend to anybody Especially younger folks like you mentioned you don't have this kind of experience that haven't hit that wall yet Read that article.
It'll be really helpful Yeah, you know another the one I can never forget was because it was a top headline on anti-war comm it was actually from like Page43 of the Washington Post but on anti-war comm in in the other virtual reality of the internet there Where Eric can rank the news stories in whatever order he wants It was one of the top stories of the day that guess what all the nuclear?
Experts say that the aluminum tubes couldn't possibly be used for centrifuges Not like they have a Manhattan project where they could spin a single centrifuge anywhere in Iraq anyway But these are for rockets for Katyusha type rockets that you shoot out of the back of your pickup truck give us a break This is not nuclear anything and that was in September of 2002 and so it was like ta-da symbols crash.
Holy crap There you go the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department and the Department of Energy experts the actual experts say give me a break these aluminum tubes are for rockets not centrifuges and then From it didn't matter The New York Times and the Washington Post itself and the entire political class and everyone on TV They all just pretended that that article never existed that they'd never heard of this and then when Bush talks about aluminum tubes the day after Tomorrow nobody says yeah, but the Washington Post debunked that nobody nobody objects and on the Sunday morning news shows they go Yeah Aluminum tubes hmm, and then they just keep going with the narrative after it's been debunked as debunked could be by the government itself They had one guy at CIA who insisted it was so to get himself a promotion and they had the cabinet that was Pretending to believe it because they wanted to and I mean you can't get any more blatant than that one You know what I mean?
I mean these the people who testified against it to the post were on the record with their names You know lifelong Department of Energy nuclear experts and stuff Just yeah, man.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
We're just having fun talking now, but You're right on the point.
This is this is what needs to be realized It's it's like the press is the health of society and it's just not healthy It's really unhealthy and this is what people need to realize by whatever means they can 2008 There was I had a similar experience with John McCain claiming that Georgia was attacked without provocation by Russia.
Yeah I have a ceremony the Beijing Olympics, right?
I heard that on the on on that particular day when he made that claim the day after I heard by a news publication That there'd been an artillery attack from Georgia on South Assetta And Nobody ever called McCain on that.
Yeah, in fact, he's the people running the world And I'm just a guy watching the Internet seeing the information I already know this guy's talking complete crap because of what I heard yesterday, right?
Yeah now I don't know about the international dateline and all this you're in Australia and I can never get my head around the time zones there But I know that you know from here Eastern Europe is, you know, basically half a day ahead or whatever So what was in the middle of the night there was kind of in the middle of the day here And so we all just saw the entire story unfolding live before our eyes.
There was no question about who started it There's no question that shotcash Vili had attacked even the Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia who were there under a deal with the EU There was no question about that and then not only I'm sorry I'm just adding to all your wonderful anecdotes here Not only did McCain get away with pushing that but there was a debate with him and Obama that was hosted by Tom Brokaw of NBC News and McCain made the completely ridiculous false claim that Russia had launched this aggressive war against Georgia for no reason and he looks at Brokaw and Brokaw stops and Kind of looks at Obama and he looks back at McCain and they basically all just look at each other and agree Silently that okay.
We're just gonna go with that And then they just go on but you can see the body language just as plain as day that like oh Remember, we talked about this.
We're gonna pretend this bullshit, right?
You're not gonna contradict him.
Are you Obama?
Okay, good Go ahead.
Then.
Mr. McCain and then and it just is amazing to see And and that's the kind of thing that could get humanity dead right is lies about What what Russia's military is doing and why at any given point that can have major consequences?
And it's come to the state now where you know, we're saying Trump, you know, the relative peace candidate Has has already launched two sets of missile strikes in Assyria motivated by nothing but a picture of a child doused in water a healthy child doused in water as If they were the victim of a gas attack That's all it takes now to to unleash a bunch of weapons and he's really he's Escalated the war in Afghanistan by thousands of troops and he's taken the gloves off as they say and relaxed all the rules when it comes to the drone wars and special operations forces on the ground in Iraq Syria and especially in Yemen Somalia.
He's got a drone war going in Libya right now There's a brand new report out about the civilian casualties from that.
So he's really escalating all the terror wars I mean he actually stopped the CIA support for al-qaeda in Syria.
That was good but otherwise, he's been an absolute disaster and You know at the same time we're getting reports about for instance how he wanted to pull troops out of Syria and was slapped across the knuckles by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff You know imagine what it would be like if this if this was Hillary in charge No, man.
Well, I mean, I'm in al-zawahiri would be sitting on the throne in Damascus for one thing, right?
Yeah Jesus.
All right.
Hey, listen Simon.
This has been great talking with you.
I really appreciate you sticking up for a song I really you know, I talked with him back in 2010 or something.
I should have been doing a better job of Covering this story myself.
So I appreciate you helping me pick up the slack here, too.
Oh Look, thanks for having me on.
I'm glad that's you know, I'm not alone As a voice in this regard myself, so I think you're doing a great job, man All right.
Well, thanks again for coming on the show.
Really appreciate it Thanks.
Good.
Yeah Okay, guys, that's dr.
Simon Floth He is an Australian analytical philosopher and an early contributor to WikiLeaks you can find his article at anti-war comm it's called a Sanchez Ecuadorian cave and It's from June 16th 2018 All right, you guys and that's the show You know me Scott Horton org youtube.com slash Scott Horton show Libertarian Institute org and By my book and it's now available in audiobook as well fools errand time to end the war in Afghanistan hey, it's endorsed by Ron Paul and Daniel Ellsberg and Stephen Walt and Peter Van Buren and Matthew Ho and Daniel Davis and Anand Gopal and Patrick Coburn and Eric Margulies You'll like it fools air and time to end the war in Afghanistan and Follow me on twitter at Scott Horton show.
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