Daily archives: September 11, 2023


Defend Assange US Tour 182

I am currently in Minnesota where I am speaking tonight and doing several media interviews. The primary purpose of the whole US visit is not the public appearances, but preparation for the campaign and defence in the USA should extradition go ahead.

That does not mean at all that the focus has in any way shifted from preventing extradition from the UK, and the legal defence remain fully engaged and optimistic about both the High Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

But I am also very buoyed by the extraordinary depth and quality of the support in the USA.

The profound resistance to the Espionage Act prosecution of a publisher is at the moment a sleeping giant, simply because nothing is visibly happening here in the USA. But in the event extradition happened, that would change overnight.

For Biden to go into the election, attempting both to jail his main political opponent, and simultaneously to jail the world’s most famous publisher, would ring some alarm bells with all but the very dimmest.

Plus while the diehard Democrats will never accept that Russiagate was a lie that has been comprehensively debunked, the diehard Democrat vote is not enough to get Biden re-elected. That fake narrative has lost its universal power, and the coverage that will inevitably result should Julian be extradited will lead to a wider understanding that the Espionage charges relate solely to the Chelsea Manning revelations.

We need to be ahead of the game. Should Julian arrive in the USA, it will be the biggest news story in the world on that day. We need the campaigning logistics all worked out in advance. We need to get ahead of the media story in ways we failed to do when Julian was removed from the Embassy.

We need to have events planned all round the States ready to go, that will provide alternative image messages from actions, for both local and national news, to counter the “perp” images.

I am extremely impressed by both the vibrant alternative media, and the highly media-experienced pool of campaigners and activists across the States on which we can draw to put up to the mainstream media for interview.

There are of course also the logistics of bringing the core crew over to get up and running in the US, at what could be very short notice.

So that is why I have disappeared. I am always incredibly grateful to the subscribers who support me even when I am off doing activism rather than writing.

Here am I at the New York lunch event, which was completely sold out and could have sold ten times over, though rather I think for Chris Hedges than me.

The sound is very bad for the first two minutes of my talk but improves radically thereafter so please stick with it. (If anyone knows how to edit out the bad sound sections and a couple of other distractions and make a new version, I should be grateful.)

Incidentally, because demand was so high we ended up using a second section of the restaurant which ended up in me speaking in two directions at once. Half of the audience are seated in a vault which was reputedly Rockefeller’s personal depository.

After Minnesota I shall be travelling to Washington DC. Organisers are panicking that nobody there is signing up to come and see me, and that everybody in DC hates me. So if you know anybody in DC who doesn’t yet hate me…

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